An FPGA-based Middlebox with Remote Dynamically Reconfigurable Application Plane

Abstract

This paper presents an FPGA-based middlebox architecture with dynamically reconfigurable application plane implemented with NetFPGA CML. The application plane circuitry can be remotely reconfigured at run-time to enable functional update for optimization, customization, and extension. The proposed reconfigurable application plane exhibits high degree of flexibility to support dynamic functional module allocation in FPGA-based network systems. The reconfigurable application plane is implemented by leveraging the dynamic partial reconfiguration feature in FPGA device. A management plane is required to handle the remote dynamic partial recon-figuration. With customized reconfiguration controller in the management plane, the reconfiguration throughput higher than 3.19987 Gbps is achieved, which is significant to minimize the duration of service interruption.