RiceNIC: A Reconfigurable and Programmable Gigabit Network Interface Card

Jeff Shafer, Dr. Scott RixnerRice Computer Architecture: http://www.cs.rice.edu/CS/Architecture

System ArchitectureSystem Architecture

Development PlatformDevelopment Platform Avnet Virtex-II Pro Development Board

Serial Port

RJ-45 Port

DDR

Virtex FPGA

Spartan FPGA

PCI InterfaceEthernet PHY

Networks are Essential!Networks are Essential! Networking is an integral part of computer systems The role of a network interface is evolving

Significant new research is changing the hardware/software interface between the operating system and the network interface card (NIC)

Researchers need a flexible NIC to study this field RiceNIC is a reconfigurable and programmable Gigabit

Ethernet NIC that meets these research needs NIC design is freely available for research/education! NIC provides significant computation and storage

resources and allows the user to customize NIC behavior in software and hardware.

Device UtilizationDevice Utilization Space for future development

Component Virtex FPGASlice Registers 9,089 / 27,392 33%4 input LUTs 11,811 / 27,392 43%BRAMs 51 / 136 37%Occupied Slices 9,164 / 13,696 66%Global Clocks 10 / 16 62%Clock Managers 5 / 8 62%Gate Count: 3,944,049

NIC FeaturesNIC Features Software Programmability

Dual 300 MHz PowerPC processors

256 MB DDR memory 2MB SRAM (accessible

from host and NIC) Serial port for debugging Descriptor control system

Hardware Acceleration MAC / DMA controllers TCP Checksum Offloading Hardware Event notification

PCI Bus (64b / 66 MHz)

DDRMemory(256 MB)

Bridge

PCI

SRAM(2 MB)

HardwareEvents

PowerPC 405Embedded Processor

(300 MHz)

PLB Bus

I-Cache(16 KB)

D-Cache(16 KB)

BRAM(32 KB)

Virtex FPGA

Spartan FPGA

GigabitEthernet

PowerPC 405Embedded Processor

(300 MHz)

I-Cache(16 KB)

D-Cache(16 KB)

Scratchpad(2 KB)

Back-EndDMA

SRAMController

Bridge

Front-EndDMA

DDRControllerUART

RS-232Serial

FPGA Development Board

GigabitMAC

PHY

PerformancePerformance RiceNIC TCP stream throughput

compared to commercial NIC

Software DesignSoftware Design PowerPC processor runs custom

packet-handling firmware Interfaces with MAC to

send/receive packets Interfaces with DDR to store

bulk frame data Interfaces with DMA engine

to transfer data to/from host Custom Linux and FreeBSD

device drivers

Virtex FPGA PlacementVirtex FPGA Placement

Ethernet MAC

DDR Controller

PCI DMAEngine

NIC Control & Data Bus

PowerPCProcessors