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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical RE: 10GE router resource
> High-rate routers try to keep the packets in an SRAM queue > and instead of looking up destinations in a DRAM-based radix > tree, they use a special memory device called a TCAM. FPGAs can be used to do both SRAM and TCAMs. All that is needed is an FPGA board with 10G or a 10G card with an FPGA on it. Although NetFPGA and RiceNIC are both 1G devices, there is a certain commercial market for programmable high-speed network cards for things like Intrusion Detection and data-center/GRID type applications. Anyone seriously interested in this area should start hunting amongst the developers (and researchers) of embedded systems. You might end up working with a university student in the Czech Republic to put his TCAM/FPGA implementation onto a 10G card because the Internet breaks down the barriers that high-margin vendors have used to create lock-in. Bleeding edge networks may not be able to do this type of deal but then, they are only 1% or less of the network operators out there. --Michael Dillon
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