Specification of a configurable general-purpose protocol processor

Abstract

A general-purpose protocol processor is specified with a dedicated architecture for protocol processing. This paper defines a functional coverage, analyses the control requirements, specifies functional pages and a controller unit. The general-purpose protocol processor is aimed for network terminals, therefore routing is not completely supported. However it should be possible to use it as part of a router with some minor modifications. The general-purpose protocol processor is partitioned into two parts, a configurable stand alone part and a program based microcontroller. The configurable part performs the protocol processing without any running program. The processor does not execute any cycle based program, instead execution is controlled by configuration vectors and control vectors. The microcontroller assists with the interface to the host processor and handles the configuration. It is concluded that by partitioning the control into three levels, the architecture is flexible and verification is simplified. The proposed architecture also has higher performance and lower power dissipation than other solutions.

Packet Buffer Management for a High-Speed Network Interface Card

“…Tomas Henriksson, et al [2][7] proposed a protocol processor architecture. As shown in Figure 2, in this new architecture, packet reception scheme moves layer 3 and layer 4 processing to a NIC [1][6] [7]. Packets received at NIC are processed for physical layer and link layer protocols as well as network layer and transport layer protocols.…”

“…Packets received at NIC are processed for physical layer and link layer protocols as well as network layer and transport layer protocols. Protocol processor can handle protocol processing at a wire speed [1] [7].…”

Packet Classification and Termination in a Protocol Processor

“…These are commonly denoted as TCP Offload Engines (TOE). One of these TOE solutions is called programmable protocol processor (PPP) and it was introduced by this papers authors in [1] and [2] 1999. As most of the TOE it consist of programmable parts that can accelerate and offload a terminal host processor by handling the communication protocol processing.…”

A Study for Packet Buffer Algorithms for a Protocol Processor

“…al [2][4] [7] proposed offloading the host processor for handling protocol tasks. The idea is to move a processor (protocol processor for handling layers 3-4) to Network Interface Card (NIC).…”