Suricata and CUDA

[Jake Sallee]

Is anyone using CUDA / OpenCL + Suricata to increase performance in their SO boxen?

I understand that most other parts of SO may not directly profit from using CUDA but if I can off load the ruleset and pattern matching to a CUDA card shouldn't that, at least theoretically, increase the amount of CPU I can use for Bro, et al. thereby gaining a performance boost?

I have been looking for some CUDA benchmarks but haven't found much yet. It doesn't look like anyone supports OpenCL at all :(

I wonder about the cost benefit ratio for CUDA acceleration too. Is the cost of a good CUDA card justified or is is more effective to spend the money on more processor cores?

As always, I welcome your input.

[Jason Ish]

It is currently not recommended to use CUDA with Suricata at this time. I'm not sure if it even works correctly anymore. The code is still there, but more as a reference for someone who would like to pick up development of it again. Right now you'll get more mileage by building Suricata with Hyperscan support, than you will with CUDA.

So to answer your question about cost benefit ratio, no, don't go out and buy a CUDA card unless you are interested in developing CUDA support for Suricata.

Jason