CUSP: a modular framework for high speed network applications on FPGAs

ABSTRACT

For several years now, modern FPGAs have included onchip network related hard cores. These cores include Xilinx's RocketIO and Altera's RapidIO serial transceivers. However, to use these cores in a complete networking application may be a daunting task to a non-networking expert. In addition to the complicated use of these components, the high performance needs of modern networking applications require designs that are optimized for low latency and a moderately high clock rate. Therefore to meet these challenges, we present CUSP (Click Utilizing Speculation and Parallelism)for reconfigurable hardware platforms.Click is an accepted software network router framework that is similar to CUSP, but specifically built for a Linux platform and software network routers. CUSP, while also having a modular design of reusable components, additionally provides automated speculation and parallelism to gain better performance on FPGAs. An accompanying scripting language allows quick creation of these routers from a body of existing components. We have implemented an example network application through the CUSP design flow and its performance will be compared against alternative network design methods.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.0 GENERAL
      Subjects: System architectures

Additional Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.1 PROCESSOR ARCHITECTURES
      C.1.3 Other Architecture Styles
          Subjects: Heterogeneous (hybrid) systems

General Terms:
Design, Performance

Keywords:
networking, parallelism, reconfigurable hardware, speculation