Experimental survey of FPGA-based monolithic switches and a novel queue balancer
File(s)
Accepted version
Author(s)
Papaphilippou, Philippos
Sano, Kentaro
Adhi, Boma A
Luk, Wayne
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
This paper studies small to medium-sized monolithic switches for FPGA implementation and presents a novel switch design that achieves high algorithmic performance and FPGA implementation efficiency. Crossbar switches based on virtual output queues (VOQs) and variations have been rather popular for implementing switches on FPGAs, with applications in network switches, memory interconnects, network-on-chip (NoC) routers etc. The implementation efficiency of crossbar-based switches is well-documented on ASICs, though we show that their disadvantages can outweigh their advantages on FPGAs. One of the most important challenges in such input-queued switches is the requirement for iterative scheduling algorithms. In contrast to ASICs, this is more harmful on FPGAs, as the reduced operating frequency and narrower packets cannot “hide” multiple iterations of scheduling that are required to achieve a modest scheduling performance.Our proposed design uses an output-queued switch internally for simplifying scheduling, and a queue balancing technique to avoid queue fragmentation and reduce the need for memory-sharing VOQs. Its implementation approaches the scheduling performance of a state-of-the-art FPGA-based switch, while requiring considerably fewer resources.
Date Issued
2023-02-13
Date Acceptance
2023-01-28
Citation
IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, 2023, 34 (5), pp.1621-1634
ISSN
1045-9219
Publisher
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
Start Page
1621
End Page
1634
Journal / Book Title
IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems
Volume
34
Issue
5
Copyright Statement
Copyright © 2023 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.
Identifier
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10043741
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2023-02-13