Technologies for scalable packet reception and transmission

One or more machine-readable storage media comprising a plurality of instructions stored thereon that in response to being executed, cause a network device to:

• establish a ring in a memory of the network device, wherein the ring is defined as a circular buffer and includes a plurality of slots to store entries representative of packets;
• generate and assign receive descriptors to the slots in the ring, wherein each receive descriptor includes a pointer to a corresponding memory buffer to store packet data;
• determine whether a network interface controller (NIC) of the network device has received one or more packets;
• and
• copy, with direct memory access (DMA) and in response to a determination that the NIC has received one or more packets, packet data of the received one or more packets from the NIC to the memory buffers associated with the receive descriptors assigned to the slots in the ring.

A network device to process packets, the network device comprising:

• means for establishing a ring in a memory of the network device, wherein the ring is defined as a circular buffer and includes a plurality of slots to store entries representative of packets;
• means for generating and assigning receive descriptors to the slots in the ring, wherein each receive descriptor includes a pointer to a corresponding memory buffer to store packet data;
• network communication circuitry for determining whether a network interface controller (NIC) of the network device has received one or more packets;
• and
• direct memory access (DMA) circuitry for copying, with DMA and in response to a determination that the NIC has received one or more packets, packet data of the received one or more packets from the NIC to the memory buffers associated with the receive descriptors assigned to the slots in the ring.

A method for processing packets, comprising:

• establishing, by a network device, a ring in a memory of the network device, wherein the ring is defined as a circular buffer and includes a plurality of slots to store entries representative of packets;
• generating and assigning, by the network device, receive descriptors to the slots in the ring, wherein each receive descriptor includes a pointer to a corresponding memory buffer to store packet data;
• determining, by the network device, whether a network interface controller (NIC) of the network device has received one or more packets;
• and
• copying, with direct memory access (DMA) and in response to a determination that the NIC has received one or more packets, packet data of the received one or more packets from the NIC to the memory buffers associated with the receive descriptors assigned to the slots in the ring.