Packet processing load balancer

An apparatus comprising:

• a device interface;
• a first set of one or more processing units;
• and
• a second set of one or more processing units, wherein:
• the first set of one or more processing units are to perform heavy flow detection for packets of a flow and
• the second set of one or more processing units are to perform processing of packets of a heavy flow, wherein:
• the first set of one or more processing units and the second set of one or more processing units are different,
• the flow comprises the heavy flow based on a receive rate of the packets of the flow over a period of time and a first level,
• the perform heavy flow detection comprises determine a byte count of the packets of the flow at a network interface device and perform binary tree traversal using the first set of one or more processing units, and
• at least one processing unit of the first set of one or more processing units is to manage a hash-table backed binary tree for the flow to perform the heavy flow detection.

At least one non-transitory computer-readable medium comprising instructions stored thereon, that if executed by a computing system, cause the computing system to:

• use a first set of one or more processing units to perform heavy flow detection for packets of a flow and
• use a second set of one or more processing units to perform processing of packets of a heavy flow, wherein:
• the first set of one or more processing units and second set of one or more processing units are different,
• the flow comprises the heavy flow based on a receive rate of the packets of the flow over a period of time and a first level,
• the perform heavy flow detection comprises determine a byte count of the packets of the flow at a network interface device and perform binary tree traversal using the first set of one or more processing units, and
• at least one processing unit of the first set of one or more processing units is to manage a hash-table backed binary tree for the flow to perform the heavy flow detection.