Compilers for IXP Network Processor

• Main Authors: Chih-Hsiang Huang, 黃智翔
• Other Authors: Jenq-Kuen Lee
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2006
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/95709694671820685805

碩士 === 國立清華大學 === 資訊工程學系 === 94 === As huge improvement of internet infrastructure in the recent decade, people gain much more convenience on those high-speed communication and data transformation from internet than in 90’s. Network processor is a new computer architecture which is designed for nowadays high throughput network data processing, which is mainly composed of a core-processor and multiple co-processors with hierarchical memory system. This kind of complex system communicates with variety of memory architecture could make packet processing jobs separated to different mutual exclusive ones and processed by each computing units synchronously and as fast as possible. Each computing unit is supposed to run a component, which we call it PPF (packet processing function) in a packet processing flow to make sure every packet is processed in an efficient way. Intel’s network processor (Internet eXchange Processor, IXP) is the perfect example allows a single stream packet/cell processing problem to be integrated into multiple, sequential, and synchronous tasks that can be linked together easily. It has one XScale processor and multiple RISC processors called “micro-engines” which allows network application processed in simultaneous methods. Network applications shall be separated in several different tasks. In this paper, we bring up a solution using the approaches to emphasize on enabling Java programming languages over IXP network processors to make a good model for compilers over multi-core architectures. Previous work about multi-core compilers over IXP is the IXA Software Development Kit which supports only C front-end and must be tuned by human efforts. In this paper, I propose a neat interface for users to program Intel IXP network processors without considering about hardware details. Also, by the convenience of GNU Compiler Collection, programmers on Intel IXP could easily use this tools to help program the network application on IXP.