> Although Homa is not API-compatible with TCP, it should be possible to bring it into widespread usage by integrating it with RPC frameworks.
Not being sockets API compatible kinda sucks. Ok, we could use a new connect() variation that allows for earlier data send, but the API being mostly similar would help -- there's a ton of socket code out there!
As for RPC, well, RPC is mostly a thing of the past with most everything today is HTTPS, but usually through libraries that do the I/O, so it's possible to retrofit a new transport protocol into them. But why not just use QUIC within the datacenter?
I don't think they mean RPC in the sense of rpc(3), but rather things like gRPC or protobuf. The point is that if both sides really just want to talk gRPC to each other (and never want to talk plain TCP to each other), then that use case is "easy" to meet by implementing gRPC on top of Homa.
Not being sockets API compatible kinda sucks. Ok, we could use a new connect() variation that allows for earlier data send, but the API being mostly similar would help -- there's a ton of socket code out there!
As for RPC, well, RPC is mostly a thing of the past with most everything today is HTTPS, but usually through libraries that do the I/O, so it's possible to retrofit a new transport protocol into them. But why not just use QUIC within the datacenter?