US Patent 10164905 Efficient management of network traffic in a multi-CPU server

A Network Interface Controller (NIC) includes a network interface, a peer interface and steering logic. The network interface is configured to receive incoming packets from a communication network. The peer interface is configured to communicate with a peer NIC not via the communication network. The steering logic is configured to classify the packets received over the network interface into first incoming packets that are destined to a local Central Processing Unit (CPU) served by the NIC, and second incoming packets that are destined to a remote CPU served by the peer NIC, to forward the first incoming packets to the local CPU, and to forward the second incoming packets to the peer NIC over the peer interface not via the communication network.