论文标题
桥接差距:fpgas作为可编程开关
Bridging the Gap: FPGAs as Programmable Switches
论文作者
论文摘要
P4的出现是一种特定领域的语言,与PISA(一种特定领域的体系结构)结合起来,正在彻底改变网络领域。 P4允许描述如何通过可编程数据平面(跨越ASIC和CPU)处理PISA的数据包。由于处理灵活性可能会受到ASIC的限制,而网络任务的CPU性能落后于落后,因此最近的工作提议在FPGA上实施PISA。但是,很少努力分析FPGA是否是实施PISA的好候选者。在这项工作中,我们退后一步,评估各种PISA块的微体系结构效率。我们证明,在理论和实验分析的支持下,一些PISA块的性能受到当前FPGA体系结构的严重限制。具体而言,我们显示匹配表和可编程数据包调度程序代表基于FPGA的可编程开关的主要性能瓶颈。因此,我们探索了减轻这些缺点的两种途径。首先,我们确定针对当前FPGA的量身定制的网络应用程序。其次,为了支持更广泛的网络应用程序,我们建议对FPGA体系结构进行修改,这些架构也可以在网络领域之外感兴趣。
The emergence of P4, a domain specific language, coupled to PISA, a domain specific architecture, is revolutionizing the networking field. P4 allows to describe how packets are processed by a programmable data plane, spanning ASICs and CPUs, implementing PISA. Because the processing flexibility can be limited on ASICs, while the CPUs performance for networking tasks lag behind, recent works have proposed to implement PISA on FPGAs. However, little effort has been dedicated to analyze whether FPGAs are good candidates to implement PISA. In this work, we take a step back and evaluate the micro-architecture efficiency of various PISA blocks. We demonstrate, supported by a theoretical and experimental analysis, that the performance of a few PISA blocks is severely limited by the current FPGA architectures. Specifically, we show that match tables and programmable packet schedulers represent the main performance bottlenecks for FPGA-based programmable switches. Thus, we explore two avenues to alleviate these shortcomings. First, we identify network applications well tailored to current FPGAs. Second, to support a wider range of networking applications, we propose modifications to the FPGA architectures which can also be of interest out of the networking field.