GRIP: a reconfigurable architecture for host-based gigabit-rate packet processing

One of the fundamental challenges for modern high-performance network interfaces is the processing capabilities required to process packets at high speeds. Simply transmitting or receiving data at gigabit speeds fully utilizes the CPU on a standard workstation. Any processing that must be done to the data, whether at the application layer or the network layer, decreases the achievable throughput. This paper presents an architecture for offloading a significant portion of the network, processing from the host CPU onto the network interface. A prototype, called the GRIP (Gigabit Rate IPSec) card, has been constructed based on an FPGA coupled with a commodity Gigabit Ethernet MAC. Experimental results based on the prototype are presented and analyzed. In addition, a second generation design is presented in the context of lessons learned from the prototype.