Fully hardware based WFQ architecture for high-speed QoS packet scheduling

  • Authors:
  • Kieran McLaughlin;Dwayne Burns;Ciaran Toal;Colm McKillen;Sakir Sezer

  • Affiliations:
  • Queen's University Belfast, ECIT, Queen's Road, Queen's Island, Belfast BT3 9DT, UK;Queen's University Belfast, ECIT, Queen's Road, Queen's Island, Belfast BT3 9DT, UK;Queen's University Belfast, ECIT, Queen's Road, Queen's Island, Belfast BT3 9DT, UK;Queen's University Belfast, ECIT, Queen's Road, Queen's Island, Belfast BT3 9DT, UK;Queen's University Belfast, ECIT, Queen's Road, Queen's Island, Belfast BT3 9DT, UK

  • Venue:
  • Integration, the VLSI Journal
  • Year:
  • 2012

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

A full hardware implementation of a Weighted Fair Queuing (WFQ) packet scheduler is proposed. The circuit architecture presented has been implemented using Altera Stratix II FPGA technology, utilizing Reduced Latency DRAM (RLDRAM) II and Quad Data Rate (QDR) II SRAM memory components. The circuit can provide fine granularity Quality of Service (QoS) support at a line throughput rate of 12.8Gb/s in its current implementation. The authors suggest that, due to the flexible and scalable modular circuit design approach used, the current circuit architecture can be targeted for a full ASIC implementation to deliver 50Gb/s throughput. The circuit itself comprises three main components; a WFQ algorithm computation circuit, a tag/time-stamp sort and retrieval circuit, and a high throughput shared buffer. The circuit targets the support of emerging wireline and wireless network nodes that focus on Service Level Agreements (SLA's) and Quality of Experience.