TOE vs Software TCP Stack

The W5300 is an Ethernet controller that includes a Hardwired TCP/IP stack, which offloads the processing of the TCP/IP protocol from the main CPU to the hardware engine, improving system performance.

To compare the performance of WIZnet's W5300 Hardwired TCP and Software TCP Stack, you conducted a test where you sent and received TCP and Coremark in parallel. The test involved periodically sending and receiving TCP packets while running the Coremark benchmark to evaluate the performance of the system under heavy load.

This test was run in a FreeRTOS environment, where the device is in constant communication with the Local Echo Server and the lowest task is the CoreMark benchmark.

<Software TCP Stack Test Result>

Software TCP Stack sent data 18172 times in one Coremark test. One Coremark run took 63.802 seconds, and the Coremark score was 78.36749.

<TOE Test Result>

Software TCP Stack sent data 15380 times in one Coremark test. One Coremark run took 51.885 seconds, and the Coremark score was 96.366965.

We compared these data and organized them into the chart below.

CoreMark scores were 23% higher with the TOE method, and the time to send data was 4% faster with the TOE method.

Note :This test was done with the CPU clock set to 100Mhz.The TOE used interrupts.