Efficient queue-balancing switch for FPGAs

Abstract

This paper presents a novel FPGA-based switch design that achieves high algorithmic performance and an efficient FPGA implementation. Crossbar switches based on virtual output queues (VOQs) and variations have been rather popular for implementing switches on FPGAs, with applications to network-on-chip (NoC) routers and network switches. The efficiency of VOQs is well-documented on ASICs, though we show that their disadvantages can outweigh their advantages on FPGAs. 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. Our implementation approaches the scheduling performance of the state-of-the-art, while requiring considerably fewer FPGA resources.