12 Embedded Multi-Core Processing for Networking Theofanis Orphanoudakis University of Peloponnese Tripoli, Greece
[email protected] Stylianos Perissakis Intracom Telecom Athens, Greece
[email protected] CONTENTS 12.1 Introduction ............................ 400 12.2 Overview of Proposed NPU Architectures ............ 403 12.2.1 Multi-Core Embedded Systems for Multi-Service Broadband Access and Multimedia Home Networks . 403 12.2.2 SoC Integration of Network Components and Examples of Commercial Access NPUs .............. 405 12.2.3 NPU Architectures for Core Network Nodes and High-Speed Networking and Switching ......... 407 12.3 Programmable Packet Processing Engines ............ 412 12.3.1 Parallelism ........................ 413 12.3.2 Multi-Threading Support ................ 418 12.3.3 Specialized Instruction Set Architectures ....... 421 12.4 Address Lookup and Packet Classification Engines ....... 422 12.4.1 Classification Techniques ................ 424 12.4.1.1 Trie-based Algorithms ............ 425 12.4.1.2 Hierarchical Intelligent Cuttings (HiCuts) . 425 12.4.2 Case Studies ....................... 426 12.5 Packet Buffering and Queue Management Engines ....... 431 399 400 Multi-Core Embedded Systems 12.5.1 Performance Issues ................... 433 12.5.1.1 External DRAMMemory Bottlenecks ... 433 12.5.1.2 Evaluation of Queue Management Functions: INTEL IXP1200 Case ................. 434 12.5.2 Design of Specialized Core for Implementation of Queue Management in Hardware ................ 435 12.5.2.1 Optimization Techniques .......... 439 12.5.2.2 Performance Evaluation of Hardware Queue Management Engine ............. 440 12.6 Scheduling Engines ......................... 442 12.6.1 Data Structures in Scheduling Architectures ..... 443 12.6.2 Task Scheduling ..................... 444 12.6.2.1 Load Balancing ................ 445 12.6.3 Traffic Scheduling ...................