<title>PC/ATM interface accelerator using reconfigurable technology</title>

Abstract

Current high-speed communication networks exhibit gigabit bandwidths. Nevertheless, applications cannot take advantage of these advances due to host interface and machine and system architecture limitations. Today, the main concern is to reduce the protocol overheads imposed on data transfers, minimizing memory copies and implementing off-host communication functions.We propose a novel architecture for real-time distributed systems using a 155Mbit/s ATM network. The system is based on an intelligent communication interface board for PCs, which integrates a Transputer, an FPGA and a VRAM to implement flexible high level communication services. These services are multiple copy updates of distributed real-time data on monitoring machines, transfers of audio and video streams coming from several cameras.The main advantages of our architecture over traditional systems include the reduction of the multimedia load imposed on the host processor, the provision of an efficient real-time data service for applications, and the support of existing standard protocols such as TCP/IP for traditional data.The board is being developed and will soon be experimented on a platform with live applications. The interest of this work is reinforced by the fact that integration of a processor and FPGA on a single chip will be available in the near future.

Implementing Application-Specific Cache-Coherence Protocols in Configurable Hardware

“…McHenry et al [22] have proposed an FPGA-based front-end processor that filters information to an ATM firewall host to ensure network security. Guillaud et al [23] have proposed a communication interface board for PCs which incorporates a transputer, an FPGA, and a VRAM to implement reconfigurable high level communication services for distributed real-time data and multimedia communication. None of these approaches, however, have considered configurable network interfaces with parallel computing applications in mind.…”