High-Performance Hardware Tracing of SmartNIC Packet Processing Pipelines
Beschreibung
With the advent of research on the next generation of
mobile communications 6G, we are engaged in exploring
architecture extensions for Smart Network Interface Cards
(SmartNICs). To enable adaptive, energy-efficient and
low-latency network interfaces, we are prototyping a
custom packet processing pipeline on FPGA-based NICs,
partially based on the open-nic project
(https://github.com/Xilinx/open-nic).
Modern server architectures face constant challenges in
performance and energy efficiency. SmartNICs offer a
promising solution by offloading packet preprocessing and collecting real-time traffic analytics. These capabilities allow servers to dynamically adapt to changing network conditions and processing demands. However, operating at speeds of 100 Gbps generates massive data volumes that require sophisticated monitoring and debugging capabilities.
This thesis focuses on designing and implementing advanced hardware extensions for debugging and tracing SmartNIC packet processing pipelines using Hardware Description Language (HDL). The developed system will provide critical visibility into high-speed packet processing operations and monitoring logic.
- Developing trace collection mechanisms compatible with 100 Gbps line rates
- Engineering efficient solutions for capturing, moving, and storing large volumes of trace data
- Implementing strategies to avoid performance degradation during trace collection
- Applying suitable postprocessing and generating visualizations of key information
Voraussetzungen
- Programming skills in VHDL/Verilog, C, Python and preferably Rust
- Practical experience with FPGA Design and Implementation
- Good Knowledge of computer architecture, low-level software and OSI network model
- Comfortable with the Linux command line and bash
Kontakt
Marco Liess, M.Sc.
Tel.: +49.89.289.23873
Email: marco.liess@tum.de