Network Function Virtualization based on FPGAs: A Framework for all-Programmable network devices

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) refers to the use of commodity hardware resources as the basic platform to perform specialized network functions as opposed to specialized hardware devices. Currently, NFV is mainly implemented based on general purpose processors, or general purpose network processors. In this paper we propose the use of FPGAs as an ideal platform for NFV that can be used to provide both the flexibility of virtualizations and the high performance of the specialized hardware. We present the early attempts of using FPGA’s dynamic reconfiguration in network processing applications to provide flexible network functions and we present the opportunities for an FPGA-based NFV platform. Keywords—network function virtualization (NFV); dynamic reconfiguration; network processing