Ruler: high-speed packet matching and rewriting on NPUs

Programming specialized network processors (NPU) is inherently difficult. Unlike mainstream processors where architectural features such as out-of-order execution and caches hide most of the complexities of efficient program execution, programmers of NPUs face a `bare-metal' view of the architecture. They have to deal with a multithreaded environment with a high degree of parallelism, pipelining and multiple, heterogeneous, execution units and memory banks. Software development on such architectures is expensive. Moreover, different NPUs, even within the same family, differ considerably in their architecture, making portability of the software a major concern. At the same time expensive network processing applications based on deep packet inspection are both increasingly important and increasingly difficult to realize due to high link rates. They could potentially benefit greatly from the hardware features offered by NPUs, provided they were easy to use. fore propose to use more ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: ANCS
• Authors: Tomas Hruby, Kees van Reeuwijk, Herbert Bos
• Keywords: ANCS 2007, Computer Networks, Deep Packet Inspection, Network Processors, Ruler Provides Packet