Title :
Application decomposition for high-speed network processing platforms
Author :
Nikolaou, Nikos A. ; Sanchez P, J.-A. ; Orphanoudakis, Theofanis ; Pollatos, Dionissios ; Zervos, Nicholas
Author_Institution :
Bell Labs. Adv. Technol. EMEA, Huizen, Netherlands
fDate :
6/24/1905 12:00:00 AM
Abstract :
The rapid advancements in optical networking have increased the capacity of physical links. As an alternative to the ASIC or generic microprocessor-based approaches, new semiconductor devices have emerged, called network processors (NP), optimised to provide programmable processing of protocol data units in networks with diverse requirements for current and emerging protocols and services. In this paper we present a NP architecture that targets the tight coupling of software and hardware for the efficient execution of telecommunication protocols. The proposed architecture is based on a high-performance RISC core, which is extended with reconfigurable, pipelined hardware. Additionally, we discuss the application spectrum of the proposed NP and describe a statefull-inspection application for an IP-firewall system. To identify time-critical operations, CPU-consuming functions and the common execution path pertaining to the statefull-inspection application, extensive protocol profiling has been performed resulting in an efficient SW/HW partitioning of the application on the proposed NP platform. The analysis performed concludes that the described protocol processor can sustain demanding protocol processing up to the transport layer for multiple Gbits/sec of incoming network traffic.
Keywords :
Internet; authorisation; digital signal processing chips; optical fibre networks; pipeline processing; protocols; reconfigurable architectures; reduced instruction set computing; telecommunication security; telecommunication traffic; CPU-consuming functions; IP-firewall system; SW/HW partitioning; application decomposition; common execution path; high-performance RISC core; high-speed network processing platforms; network processors; network traffic; optical networking; programmable processing; protocol data units; protocol profiling; reconfigurable pipelined hardware; semiconductor devices; software hardware coupling; statefull-inspection application; telecommunication protocols; time-critical operations; Application software; Application specific integrated circuits; Computer architecture; Hardware; High speed optical techniques; High-speed networks; Optical fiber networks; Optical network units; Semiconductor devices; Transport protocols;
Conference_Titel :
Universal Multiservice Networks, 2002. ECUMN 2002. 2nd European Conference on
Print_ISBN :
0-7803-7422-3
DOI :
10.1109/ECUMN.2002.1002121