Hybrid cache architecture for high speed packet processing

The exposed memory hierarchies employed in many network processors (NPs) are expensive and hard to be effectively utilized. On the other hand, conventional cache cannot be directly incorporated into NP either because of its low efficiency in locality exploitation for network applications. In this paper, a novel memory hierarchy component, called split control cache, is presented. The proposed scheme employs two independent low latency memory stores to temporarily hold the flow-based and application-relevant information, exploiting the different locality behaviors exhibited by these two types of data. Data movement is manipulated by specially designed hardware to relieve the programmers from details of memory management. Performance evaluation shows that this component can achieve a hit rate of over 90% with only 16 KB of memories in route lookup under link rate of OC-3c and provide enough flexibility for the implementation of most network applications.