ITR: Collaborative Research: Processor Architectures for Web Switches

这个项目是加州大学河滨分校和洛杉矶分校的合作成果，主要研究网络交换机的处理器和系统架构问题。Web交换机是基于内容修改网络流量的网络处理元件。这些设备经常用于在功能相同的服务器以及加密服务之间提供负载平衡；在未来，它将被用于许多新的应用，包括主动安全和多媒体转码。该项目将首先开发一个基准测试框架，该框架可用于评估Web交换机的性能。然后，该研究将使用先进的处理器模拟工具来研究面对基准工作负载的架构权衡。特别是，研究人员将重点关注已提出的硬件加速器块的功效。最后，在现有网络处理器测试平台的背景下，将完成实现工作负载和利用所获得的知识的工作。

This project, which is a collaborative effort between the University ofCalifornia at Riverside and Los Angeles, focuses on processor andsystem architecture issues for Web Switches. Web switches are networkprocessing elements that modify network traffic based on content.These devices are frequently used to provide load balancing betweenfunctionally equivalent servers as well as cryptographic services; inin the future will be used for a host of new applications includingactive security and multimedia trans-coding. This project will beginby developing a benchmarking framework that can be used to evaluatethe performance of Web switches. The research will then use advancedprocessor simulation tools to study architectural tradeoffs in theface of the benchmark workload. In particular, the researchers willfocus on the efficacy of hardware accelerator blocks that have beenproposed. Finally, work will be completed to implement the workloadand capitalize on acquired knowledge in the context of an existingtest bed for network processors.