Management of resource affinities in computing systems having multiple cores

A computing device, comprising:

• a main processor having multiple cores configured to execute instructions independently;
• a network interface controller operatively coupled to the main processor, the network interface controller having one or more virtual ports each having one or more queues configured to receive and temporarily store packets, wherein each of the queues is affinitized with one of the cores of the main processor;
• and
• a memory containing instructions executable by the main processor to cause the main processor to:
• receive, at the main processor, a request from the network interface controller to perform network processing operations for packets in a queue of a virtual port of the network interface controller, the packets belonging to a single communication flow;
• in response to receiving the request, perform the network processing operations at a first core with which the queue of the virtual port is affinitized to effect processing and transmission of the packets;
• while performing the network processing operations with the first core, determine whether the first core has a utilization level higher than a threshold;
• and
• in response to a determination that the utilization level of the first core is higher than the threshold:
• switch processing and transmission of a remaining portion of the packets from the first core to a second one of the cores of the main processor based on a current utilization level of the second core being lower than the threshold and higher than another threshold;
• and
• affinitize the queue of the virtual port with the second core.

A method for network traffic management in a computing device having a network interface controller operatively coupled to a main processor with multiple cores, the network interface controller having one or more virtual port individually having one or more queues configured to receive and temporarily store packets, wherein the method comprising:

• receiving, at the main processor, a request from the network interface controller to perform network processing operations at a first core of the main processor for packets assigned by the network interface controller to a queue of a virtual port of the network interface controller;
• in response to receiving the request, perform the network processing operations with the first core with which the queue of the virtual port is affinitized to effect processing and transmission of the packets;
• determining whether the first core has a utilization level lower than a threshold when performing the network processing operations to effect processing and transmission of the packets;
• and
• in response to a determination that the first core has a utilization level lower than the threshold, switch processing and transmission of a remaining portion of the packets in the queue from the first core to a second core of the main processor based on a current utilization level of the second core being higher than the threshold and lower than another threshold.