Patent attributes
Techniques are disclosed for utilizing control packets to manage flows by a smart network interface card (smartNIC). In one example, an accelerator of the smartNIC determines that a cache entry of a cache that is managed by the accelerator is a candidate for removal. The cache entry stores flow state of a particular flow. The accelerator generates a control packet that includes flow information of the particular flow that is formatted utilizing a particular header format, the flow information operable for generating a hash that indexes to the cache entry. The accelerator includes an instruction within the control packet that requests a programming data plane of the smartNIC to provide instructions for removing the cache entry from the cache. Upon receiving the control packet, the programming data plane generates and transmits a second instruction to the accelerator for removing the cache entry from the cache.
