A Pipelined Memory Architecture for High Throughput Network Processors

Designing ASICs for each new generation of backbone routers is a time intensive and fiscally draining process. In this paper we focus on the design of a programmable architecture for backbone routers, based on the manipulation of wide irregular memory words, that can provide a feasible design alternative to custom ASICs. We propose a pipelined memory design that emphasizes worst-case throughput over latency, and co-explore architectural tradeoffs with the design of several important network algorithms. Through this co-exploration, we show that a programmable architecture can efficiently exploit behavior inherent to most common network algorithms to keep up with next generation network speeds.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: ISCA
• Authors: Timothy Sherwood, George Varghese, Brad Calder
• Keywords: Backbone Routers, Hardware, ISCA 2003, Network Algorithms, Programmable Architecture