Summary:
NetFPGA is a platform which was originally developed as an academic tool for giving hands-on layer2-3 networking development exposure to students. NetFPGA-v1 have been already (2006) used for this purpose several semesters and both v1 and v2 have been further used for multiple academic research projects. The Shunt project which is "an FGPA-accelerator for network intrusion prevention" was published in 2007 and it seems like there should be many other projects developed based on this platform as well.
I will not go through the spec as it is detailed out in the paper. The second version is obviously more powerful with several key upgrades. NetFPGA-v2 is equipped with more powerful FPGA (Virtex VP230) with two on-chip power PCs. The Power PCs or a micro-blaze on FPGA fabric can be (and is planned to be) used to enable a better integration of software/hardware modules. In addition a PCI form factor makes the system rack mountable and more portable.
It is hard to say from the paper how mature the environment is for academic purposes compared to for example Xilinx development platforms as being used for CS150 here in UC Berkeley. The board is definitely more optimized for router and switch development and of great value to many research projects.
Critique:
Even though this platform is probably an important one for grad students to be aware of, I vote for removing this paper from the syllabus and I would recommend it as a side or third paper for a class session. I think it will be more worth while to read one the interesting use cases which also has an overview of the NetFPGA platform.
No comments:
Post a Comment