4 ms·

Design and Evaluation of FPGA-Based Gigabit Ethernet Network Card (2004) [pdf]

75 points by godelmachine 9y ago

phendrenad2 9y ago
This appears to be from 2004, and it uses PCI (a now outdated and unused bus - everything is PCI Express now, which is completely different). However, if you’re interested in the low-level details of ethernet interfaces, or how an FPGA design goes from concept to completion, this is very informative. It’s also worth noting - more to the point of the paper - that there are companies offering FPGA-based gigabit NICs right now. You can define custom packet-handling logic in silicon. Pretty neat.
- monocasa 9y ago
  > a now outdated and unused bus - everything is PCI Express now, which is completely different To be totally fair, the PCI interface is delegated to a sub-FGPA on this design, so it probably wouldn't be that big of a schlep to convert. > It’s also worth noting - more to the point of the paper - that there are companies offering FPGA-based gigabit NICs right now. You can define custom packet-handling logic in silicon. Pretty neat. That existed then too. This paper is about an AVNet board.
- lightedman 9y ago
  "everything is PCI Express now, which is completely different" There's a PCI slot on my motherboard for my 7th gen i3.
orbifold 9y ago
There is an ongoing project called https://netfpga.org/ https://netfpga.org/, with several variants up to 100GBit/s.
amirhirsch 9y ago
Microsoft uses An FPGA NIC in every Azure server today
- baybal2 9y ago
  a good place to shove it: imagine how much they save on intra-dc encryption offloading, real time compression or traffic shaping
- douglasfshearer 9y ago
  Amazon also do similar with their ENA [0]. James Hamilton talked about it in 2016 [1]. [0] https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2016/06/introducing-elastic-network-adapter-ena-the-next-generation-network-interface-for-ec2-instances/ https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2016/06/introduci... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyOAjFNPAbA&t=1820 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyOAjFNPAbA&t=1820
  - bogomipz 9y ago
    The youtube link at the 35:00 mark says that the networking is an custom ASIC not an FPGA. "Amazon Annapurna ASIC" is what the slide says. Are the ENA instances using something else?
    - douglasfshearer 9y ago
      First gen ENA (never publicly acknowledged AFAIK) was an FPGA, second gen is an ASIC.
- zeusk 9y ago
  Here are some links for Project Catapult (Microsoft Research initiative for large scale FPGA deployment in DCs) which includes Project brainwave (TPU competitor): Landing page: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/project-catapult/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/project-cat... Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NJ-faSklzs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NJ-faSklzs Blog post: https://blogs.microsoft.com/ai/the_moonshot_that_succeeded/ https://blogs.microsoft.com/ai/the_moonshot_that_succeeded/
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]

75 points by godelmachine 9y ago

This appears to be from 2004, and it uses PCI (a now outdated and unused bus - everything is PCI Express now, which is completely different). However, if you’re interested in the low-level details of ethernet interfaces, or how an FPGA design goes from concept to completion, this is very informative. It’s also worth noting - more to the point of the paper - that there are companies offering FPGA-based gigabit NICs right now. You can define custom packet-handling logic in silicon. Pretty neat.

monocasa 9y ago
> a now outdated and unused bus - everything is PCI Express now, which is completely different To be totally fair, the PCI interface is delegated to a sub-FGPA on this design, so it probably wouldn't be that big of a schlep to convert. > It’s also worth noting - more to the point of the paper - that there are companies offering FPGA-based gigabit NICs right now. You can define custom packet-handling logic in silicon. Pretty neat. That existed then too. This paper is about an AVNet board.
lightedman 9y ago
"everything is PCI Express now, which is completely different" There's a PCI slot on my motherboard for my 7th gen i3.

orbifold 9y ago

There is an ongoing project called https://netfpga.org/ https://netfpga.org/, with several variants up to 100GBit/s.

amirhirsch 9y ago

Microsoft uses An FPGA NIC in every Azure server today

baybal2 9y ago
a good place to shove it: imagine how much they save on intra-dc encryption offloading, real time compression or traffic shaping
douglasfshearer 9y ago
Amazon also do similar with their ENA [0]. James Hamilton talked about it in 2016 [1]. [0] https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2016/06/introducing-elastic-network-adapter-ena-the-next-generation-network-interface-for-ec2-instances/ https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2016/06/introduci... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyOAjFNPAbA&t=1820 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyOAjFNPAbA&t=1820
- bogomipz 9y ago
  The youtube link at the 35:00 mark says that the networking is an custom ASIC not an FPGA. "Amazon Annapurna ASIC" is what the slide says. Are the ENA instances using something else?
  - douglasfshearer 9y ago
    First gen ENA (never publicly acknowledged AFAIK) was an FPGA, second gen is an ASIC.
zeusk 9y ago
Here are some links for Project Catapult (Microsoft Research initiative for large scale FPGA deployment in DCs) which includes Project brainwave (TPU competitor): Landing page: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/project-catapult/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/project-cat... Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NJ-faSklzs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NJ-faSklzs Blog post: https://blogs.microsoft.com/ai/the_moonshot_that_succeeded/ https://blogs.microsoft.com/ai/the_moonshot_that_succeeded/
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]