Transcript The ANA Project Autonomic Network Architectures

ANA:
A Flexible and High-Performance
Network Architecture?
Research Questions
Ariane Keller
Bernhard Plattner
A System Architecture for
Evolving Protocol Stacks
System Architecture Alternatives
Novel Architecture
Internet Architecture
Application
Prediction
Routing
Transport
Network
SecurityApplication
Link
Monitoring
Link
Transport
System designed to support
exactly this protocol stack
System designed to support
any protocol stack
STATIC BINDING
Optimized for performance
DYNAMIC BINDING
Optimized for flexibility
ANA-Project
[email protected]
A System Architecture for
Evolving Protocol Stacks
System Requirements
• Different protocol stacks at the same time
• Change protocol stack when needed (at runtime)
– Insert monitoring functionality
– Add encryption
– Add new “protocol layer”
• Achieve “high” performance
ANA-Project
[email protected]
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A System Architecture for
Evolving Protocol Stacks
Envisioned Hardware Setup
• Execution of performance critical functions in hardware
– Partially reconfigurable FPGA
• Execution of non-critical functions in software
– CPU of host system
PCI Bus
NIC
CPU
ANA-Project
FPGA
(Virtex2/4/5)
EthPort(s)
[email protected]
NIC:
• NetFPGA
• RiceNIC
(with Avnet Board)
• Combocard
(from Liberouter)
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A System Architecture for
Evolving Protocol Stacks
How is High-Performance Defined?
• Depends on actual network traffic
– FTP traffic: High throughput
– Voice traffic: Low latency
• Characterization of network traffic
– Online profiling of network traffic
• Count the number of packets each functional block processes
– Provide meta-data about optimization goals of the block
ANA-Project
[email protected]
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A System Architecture for
Evolving Protocol Stacks
Performance Optimization
• Determine which functional block is implemented in
hardware and which in software
• Based on node local information only
– Number of packets processed by each functional block
– Meta data provided by each individual functional block
– Optimization goals provided by applications
• Additional information received from other nodes
– “Flood” optimization goals through network
ANA-Project
[email protected]
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A System Architecture for
Evolving Protocol Stacks
My (Potential) Research Questions
• Is it possible to make use of FPGAs to build a flexible
network architecture, such as ANA?
– What is the impact of flexibility on performance?
• How can we characterize “good performance” for a given
network traffic?
– Can we optimize the performance according to the
characterization of the current network traffic?
ANA-Project
[email protected]
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A System Architecture for
Evolving Protocol Stacks
Related Work: Online Profiling
• A reconfigurable platform for multi-service edge routers
– Christoforos Kachris, Stamatis Vassiliadis (Delft University of
Technology)
– Goal: lower power consumption by requiring less hardware
– 3 flow types (ip-forward, encryption, compression)
– Count processed packets for each flow type
– Number of processing units (HW only) adjusted
based on ratio between flow types
– A reconfigurable platform for multi-service edge routers (SBCCI
2007)
ANA-Project
[email protected]
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A System Architecture for
Evolving Protocol Stacks
Related Work: Online Partitioning
• ReCoNet
– Thilo Streichert, Dirk Koch, Jürgen Teich, (Erlangen-Nuremberg)
– Goal: Tolerate link as well as node defects in self-adaptive
reconfigurable networks
– Migration of tasks between HW/SW and between different nodes
– Criteria:
• Communication overhead
• Task migration overhead
• Implementation according to favorite implementation style
• Equally balance load between SW and HW
– Dynamic Task Binding for HW/SW Reconfig. Networks (SBCCI 06)
ANA-Project
[email protected]
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A System Architecture for
Evolving Protocol Stacks
Related Work: Online Profiling and
Reconfiguration
• DynaCore
– Carsten Albrecht, Thilo Pionteck, Erik Maehle (Lübeck)
– Goal: Improve flexibility, adaptability and performance of network
processors by means of a dynamically reconfigurable coprocessor.
– Computation intensive tasks offloaded to dynamically
reconfigurable FGPA.
– Use of „monitors“ to deside which functionality is implemented on
the FPGA
– DynaCore: Dynamically adaptable Coprocessor based on
Reconfiguration (PDP 2006)
ANA-Project
[email protected]
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A System Architecture for
Evolving Protocol Stacks
Open Questions: Relevant Literature
• Runntime HW/SW partitioning
that adapt „autonomously“ to
changing environments
• HW/SW Codesign for
packet processing systems
• Modelling of networking tasks
(not start-, executiontime, deadline)
• Implementations that use dynamically
reprogrammable FPGAs.
ANA-Project
[email protected]
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A System Architecture for
Evolving Protocol Stacks
People I’d like to talk with
• John Lockwood
– FPX, NetFPGA
• Someone from ReCoNets
• Herbert Walder or Marco Platzner
– Operating System for dynamically reconfigurable FPGAs.
• Someone from DynaCore
ANA-Project
[email protected]
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