Despite using high-speed network interconnection systems like InfiniBand, the communication overhead for parallel applications, especially in the area of High-Performance Computing (HPC), is still high. Using large page frames - so called hugepages in Linux - can improve the crucial work of registering communication buffers to the network adapter. Thus, an InfiniBand driver was modified. But these hugepages do not only reduce communication costs but can also improve computation time in a perceptible manner, e.g. by less TLB misses. To bypass the outlay of rewriting applications, a preload library was implemented that is able to utilize large page frames transparently. This work also shows benchmark results with these components and performance improvements of up to 10 %.

Despite using high-speed network interconnection systems like InfiniBand, the communication overhead for parallel applications, especially in the area of High-Performance Computing (HPC), is still high. Using large page frames - so called hugepages in Linux - can improve the crucial work of registering communication buffers to the network adapter. Thus, an InfiniBand driver was modified. But these hugepages do not only reduce communication costs but can also improve computation time in a perceptible manner, e.g. by less TLB misses. To bypass the outlay of rewriting applications, a preload library was implemented that is able to utilize large page frames transparently. This work also shows benchmark results with these components and performance improvements of up to 10 %.