Networking

Companies building future networks have the challenge of addressing the ever increasing and diverse data demands at an affordable cost. Two new paradigms that has evolved as a result are:

• Processing is moving closer to the data source rather than data moving to centralized compute resource for processing
• Software running in the cloud executing functions/tasks rather than on specialized hardware or local virtual machine

These factors are shaping the development of today's networks for the following reasons: strict latency requirements of emerging applications, sheer volume of data, the desire to optimize scarce networking resources and the need to connect billions of devices. As we look to the next decade, network infrastructure will become even more pervasive and integrated with every aspect of our everyday lives with the advent of technologies such as 5G, cloud, data center, to name a few. On one hand, 5G networks continue the paradigm of previous cellular standards in terms of driving bandwidth, but they also extend it to many more devices and usage models. Conversely, the rapid explosion in data-center network traffic driven by software-defined networking (SDN), Open vSwitch (OVS), and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) demands a new class of evolving accelerator cards with continually greater offload capabilities.

Speedster7t Solution

Many new and unique architecture features in Speedster7t FPGAs enable innovations in different networking technologies including 5G, network accelerators SmartNIC, high throughput packet processing and traffic management, and data-path security. Speedster7t FPGAs offer the highest performance interfaces including PCIe Gen5, fracturable Ethernet MACs up to 400G rates, GDDR6 for the highest bandwidth and lowest cost off chip storage, and DDR4/5 for large offchip bulk storage. Internally, Speedster7t FPGAs have been optimized to support high bandwidth data streams from these high performance interfaces with the new 2D Network on Chip (NOC) that enables efficient data transfers for multi Tbps of bandwidth in, out and across the FPGA fabric. An example of the aforementioned advantages is that Speedster7t FPGAs are the only FPGAs that can implement a Terabit Ethernet Switch (TbE) – a critical network entity for service and internet providers alike.

Speedster FPGAs Uniquely Support Full Bandwidth 400G Ethernet

Until recently, FPGAs have been at the center of Networking applications. In the past, designers would increase FPGA throughput by increasing the size of the buses that move data in the FPGAs. This methodology of increasing bus sizes no longer works. To support a 400G Ethernet stream, the FPGA would need to run a 1,024-bit bus at 724 MHz or a 2,048-bit bus at 642 MHz. Neither of these bus width options and FPGA performance are possible in today's most advanced FPGAs. However, Speedster7t FPGAs can easily run multiple 400G Ethernet datastreams using the new 2D NoC, which has dedicated circuitry to transfer the 400G data streams to the FPGA as 4 independent 100G data streams that are 256-bits at 506 MHz. Buses of this dimension and performance are easily managed in the Speedster7t fabric.