US Patent 10331590 Graphics processing unit (GPU) as a programmable packet transfer mechanism

Discloses is an apparatus including a network interface controller (NIC), memory, and an accelerator. The accelerator can include a direct memory access (DMA) controller configured to receive data packets from the NIC and to provide the data packets to the memory. The accelerator can also include processing circuitry to generate processed data packets by implementing packet processing functions on the data packets received from the NIC, and to provide the processed data packets to at least one processing core. Other methods, apparatuses, articles and systems are also described.