Dynamic Hardware Plugins (DHP): Exploiting Reconfigurable Hardware for High-Performance Programmable Routers

Abstract-- This paper presents the Dynamic Hardware Plugins (DHP) architecture for implementing multiple networking applications in hardware at programmable routers. By enabling multiple applications to be dynamically loaded into a single hardware device, the DHP architecture provides a scalable mechanism for implementing high-performance programmable routers. The DHP architecture is presented within the context of a programmable router architecture which processes flows in both software and hardware. Possible implementations are described as well as the prototype testbed at Washington University in Saint Louis 1