Reconfigurable network processing platforms

This dissertation presents our investigation on how to efficiently exploit reconfigurable hardware to design flexible, high performance, and power efficient network devices capable to adapt to varying processing requirements of network applications and traffic. The proposed reconfigurable network processing platform targets mainly access, edge, and enterprise devices. These devices have to sustain less bandwidth compared to those utilized in core networks. However the processing requirements on a per packet basis are much higher in these devices (e.g., payload processing). Furthermore, devices in these networks have to be flexible in order to support emerging network applications. A promising technology for the implementation of these devices is the Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). FPGAs are typical devices that combine flexibility (through the reconfiguration) and performance (through the inherent hardware nature that can exploit parallelism), therefore they can efficiently address the requirements of the edge and access network devices. A reconfigurable network processing platform is presented that includes reconfigurable hardware accelerators, a reconfigurable queue scheduler, and a configurable transactional memory controller. Furthermore, the performance and the constraints of the platform are formulated as an integer optimization problem and an integrated design flow is presented for the platform. Both static and dynamic reconfiguration is explored in this dissertation. Static reconfiguration is utilized to address the different processing requirements of network applications, while dynamic reconfiguration is utilized to adapt to network traffic fluctuations. Two representative devices were implemented and evaluated in the proposed platform; a multi-service edge router and a content-based (web) switch. In the former device, dynamic reconfiguration is utilized to deal with network traffic fluctuations. The device monitors the traffic and adapts to the network traffic fluctuations taking into account the reconfiguration overhead. In the latter device, a reconfigurable architecture for a content-based switch is utilized and compared to a mainstream network processor in terms of performance and power. The device accommodates several co-processors that can be interchanged to perform specific type of switching (e.g., URL-based or cookie-based switching). Moreover, the exploitation of reconfigurable logic is investigated for queue scheduling in network devices. A reconfigurable queue scheduler is presented that adapts to the network traffic requirements (number of active queues) and can be used both in edge routers and web switches. Finally, configurable transactional memories are proposed which can be used to efficiently deploy multi-processing platforms for network processing applications. The proposed configurable transactional memory controller can be configured based on the application and device features (e.g., number of processors), can offer an easier programming framework for multi-processor reconfigurable platforms, and provides increased performance compared to traditional locking schemes. The results of the research presented in this dissertation show that the FPGAs can be an efficient alternative to network processors and can be used not only for lower network layers, but also as a complete platform for emerging network processing applications