GENERALIZED PACKET PROCESSING OFFLOAD IN A DATACENTER

The present disclosure generally discloses packet processing offload support capabilities for supporting packet processing offload. The packet processing offload support capabilities may be configured to support general and flexible packet processing offload at an end host by leveraging a processing device (e.g., a smart network interface card (sNIC) or other suitable processing device) added to the end host to support offloading of various packet processing functions from the hypervisor of the end host to the processing device added to the end host. The packet processing offload support capabilities may be configured to support packet processing offload by including, within the end host, a virtualization switch and a packet processing offload agent which may be configured to cooperate to transparently offload at least a portion of the packet processing functions of the end host from the hypervisor of the end host to an sNIC of the end host while keeping the existing management plane and control plane interfaces of the datacenter unmodified.