Synthesis of Regular Expressions Targeting FPGAs: Current Status and Open Issues

This paper presents an overview regarding the synthesis of regular expressions targeting FPGAs. It describes current solutions and a number of open issues. Implementation of regular expressions can be very challenging when performance is critical. Software implementations may not be able to satisfy performance requirements and thus dedicated hardware engines have to be used. In the later case, automatic synthesis tools are of paramount importance to achieve fast prototyping of regular expression engines. As a case study, experimental results are presented, for FPGA implementations of the regular expressions included in the rule-set of a Network Intrusion Detection System (NIDS), Bleeding Edge, obtained using a state-of-the-art synthesis approach.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: ARC
• Authors: João Bispo, Ioannis Sourdis, João M. P. Cardoso, Stamatis Vassiliadis
• Keywords: ARC 2007, Expressions Targeting Fpgas, Hardware, Regular Expression Engines, Regular Expressions