A Hardware Architecture of a Dynamic Ranking Packet Scheduler for Programmable Network Devices

The introduction of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) separated the control and data forwarding planes, but the data plane still requires a fully programmable packet scheduler that can adapt to different traffic patterns and offer high expressiveness at line rate. The Dynamic Ranking Push-In-First-O...

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Main Authors: Mostafa Elbediwy, Bill Pontikakis, Jean-Pierre David, Yvon Savaria
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IEEE 2023-01-01
Series:IEEE Access
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10153594/
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author Mostafa Elbediwy
Bill Pontikakis
Jean-Pierre David
Yvon Savaria
author_facet Mostafa Elbediwy
Bill Pontikakis
Jean-Pierre David
Yvon Savaria
author_sort Mostafa Elbediwy
collection DOAJ
description The introduction of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) separated the control and data forwarding planes, but the data plane still requires a fully programmable packet scheduler that can adapt to different traffic patterns and offer high expressiveness at line rate. The Dynamic Ranking Push-In-First-Out (DR-PIFO) is a novel programmable hardware queue architecture, introduced for the widely-used Portable Switch Architecture (PSA) used in modern network switches and routers. With the aid of a re-ranking mechanism, the DR-PIFO offers a flexible and expressive solution for a wide range of scheduling algorithms while still meeting line rate requirements. Our design, synthesized using TSMC’s 65nm technology, achieves the desired timing rate of 1GHz while maintaining a throughput that matches the fastest existing schedulers and incurs a mere 15.5% increase in area compared to the state-of-the-art PIFO design. The proposed DR-PIFO’s hardware implementation is shown to closely approach the behavior and performance of its algorithmic model by efficiently executing various scheduling algorithms, leading to precise bandwidth distribution among traffic flows. Additionally, the DR-PIFO offers a significant reduction in the relative flow completion time (FCT) errors, exhibiting a minimum of 30% less error compared to the previously proposed models when implementing various scheduling policies with workloads collected from data centers. Thus, we believe that the DR-PIFO is a significant step toward making hardware packet schedulers more programmable.
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spelling doaj-art-d5fff7265c15475d8ab94d875c4ddb7f2025-08-20T03:10:31ZengIEEEIEEE Access2169-35362023-01-0111614226143610.1109/ACCESS.2023.328672610153594A Hardware Architecture of a Dynamic Ranking Packet Scheduler for Programmable Network DevicesMostafa Elbediwy0https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5073-510XBill Pontikakis1https://orcid.org/0009-0001-5074-3473Jean-Pierre David2https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7707-0483Yvon Savaria3https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3404-9959Department of Electrical Engineering, Polytechnique Montréal, Montreal, QC, CanadaDepartment of Electrical Engineering, Polytechnique Montréal, Montreal, QC, CanadaDepartment of Electrical Engineering, Polytechnique Montréal, Montreal, QC, CanadaDepartment of Electrical Engineering, Polytechnique Montréal, Montreal, QC, CanadaThe introduction of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) separated the control and data forwarding planes, but the data plane still requires a fully programmable packet scheduler that can adapt to different traffic patterns and offer high expressiveness at line rate. The Dynamic Ranking Push-In-First-Out (DR-PIFO) is a novel programmable hardware queue architecture, introduced for the widely-used Portable Switch Architecture (PSA) used in modern network switches and routers. With the aid of a re-ranking mechanism, the DR-PIFO offers a flexible and expressive solution for a wide range of scheduling algorithms while still meeting line rate requirements. Our design, synthesized using TSMC’s 65nm technology, achieves the desired timing rate of 1GHz while maintaining a throughput that matches the fastest existing schedulers and incurs a mere 15.5% increase in area compared to the state-of-the-art PIFO design. The proposed DR-PIFO’s hardware implementation is shown to closely approach the behavior and performance of its algorithmic model by efficiently executing various scheduling algorithms, leading to precise bandwidth distribution among traffic flows. Additionally, the DR-PIFO offers a significant reduction in the relative flow completion time (FCT) errors, exhibiting a minimum of 30% less error compared to the previously proposed models when implementing various scheduling policies with workloads collected from data centers. Thus, we believe that the DR-PIFO is a significant step toward making hardware packet schedulers more programmable.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10153594/Software-defined networkingprogrammable packet schedulershardware queuestraffic management
spellingShingle Mostafa Elbediwy
Bill Pontikakis
Jean-Pierre David
Yvon Savaria
A Hardware Architecture of a Dynamic Ranking Packet Scheduler for Programmable Network Devices
IEEE Access
Software-defined networking
programmable packet schedulers
hardware queues
traffic management
title A Hardware Architecture of a Dynamic Ranking Packet Scheduler for Programmable Network Devices
title_full A Hardware Architecture of a Dynamic Ranking Packet Scheduler for Programmable Network Devices
title_fullStr A Hardware Architecture of a Dynamic Ranking Packet Scheduler for Programmable Network Devices
title_full_unstemmed A Hardware Architecture of a Dynamic Ranking Packet Scheduler for Programmable Network Devices
title_short A Hardware Architecture of a Dynamic Ranking Packet Scheduler for Programmable Network Devices
title_sort hardware architecture of a dynamic ranking packet scheduler for programmable network devices
topic Software-defined networking
programmable packet schedulers
hardware queues
traffic management
url https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10153594/
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