Axon: a high speed communication architecture for distributed applications

The primary goal of the Axon architecture is to support a high-performance data path delivering VHSI (very high speed internetwork) bandwidth directly to applications. The significant features of Axon are: (1) an integrated design of host and network interface architecture, operating systems, and communication protocols; (2) a network virtual storage facility which includes support for virtual shared memory on loosely coupled systems; (3) a high-performance, lightweight object transport facility which can be used by both message-passing and shared-memory mechanisms; and (4) a pipelined network interface which can provide a path directly between the VHSI and host memory