Viewpoint: The importance of FPGA-to-ASIC solutions to accelerate CPU-based protocols

By Joe Rash, CebaTech
pldesignline.com (March 03, 2010)

For many years, there has been a running debate about how to best handle the processing of protocols mid-way up the protocol stack in a data networking or enterprise storage application. Oftentimes this is array of protocols is referred to as the data management layer. Algorithms in the data management layer typically include protocols such as encryption, compression, hashing, and complex searching.

For flexibility reasons, many system designs stick with off-the-shelf CPUs such as an Intel or AMD x86 processor running on a standard server motherboard. Other CPU-centric solutions deploy more embedded solutions using multi-function CPUs such as Freescale's Power QUICC processor, which resides on a plug-in PCI Express-based card. While these CPU solutions certainly provide flexibility, they often fall short of meeting high-end performance targets within the constraints of a product's cost and power budget.

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