Open-source electronic design automation for agile network defense at OVHcloud

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  • Speaker: Jean Bruant
  • email: jean [dot] bruant (at) ovhcloud [dot] com


Abstract

In a context of ever-growing worldwide communication traffic and fast deployment of IoT devices, network attacks have become a daily challenge with record-breaking throughput levels. Fast iterations are decisive to successfully mitigate the threat posed by these attacks. Compared to software solutions based on general purpose CPUs, FPGA-based mitigation appliances appear as an energy-efficient alternative which combines configurability with guaranteed high-throughput and low-latency. However, implementation of such dedicated hardware accelerators based on the register-transfer level (RTL) abstraction is a much slower and tedious process than functionally equivalent software developments.

This talk details how open-source EDA tools help with the design and maintenance of agile FPGA-based network defense systems at OVHcloud. As a key enabler, Hardware Construction Languages (HCLs), such as the Scala-embedded Chisel, apply some existing software abstractions to hardware design, which permits descriptions of circuit generators with high-level software paradigms, such as object-oriented and functional programming. We first exhibit the relevance of such software inherited paradigms to develop highly re-usable network functions, inspecting both implementation and design perspectives. Then, we review the associated open-source EDA ecosystem and the integration ability of these novel design methodologies within existing HDL hierarchies. In particular, we developed an (almost) word-for-word translation of SystemVerilog HDL to Chisel HCL and tools to smoothen the integration of Chisel-generated IPs into SystemVerilog hierarchies. These open-source tools are available at github.com/ovh/sv2chisel.

Downloads

Software

General information

Roadmap

  • We are currently working on a Chisel-based Pipeline Automation Framework that we aim at releasing as open-source in the near future.
  • We still seek help on VHDL front-end for sv2chisel to hopefully help with adoption of Chisel in Europe!
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