IP forwarding is one of the main bottlenecks in Internet backbone routers, as it requires performing the longest-prefix match at 10Gbps speed or higher. IPv6 forwarding further exacerbates the situation because its search space is quadrupled. We propose a high-performance IPv6 forwarding algorithm TrieC, and implement it efficiently on the Intel IXP2800 network processor (NPU). Programming the multi-core and multithreaded NPU is a daunting task. We study the interaction between the parallel algorithm design and the architecture mapping to facilitate efficient algorithm implementation. We experiment with an architecture-aware design principle to guarantee the high performance of the resulting algorithm.This paper investigates the main software design issues that have dramatic performance impacts on any NPU based implementation: memory space reduction, instruction selection, data allocation, task partitioning, latency hiding, and thread synchronization. In the paper, we provide insighton how to design an NPU-aware algorithm for high-performance networking applications. Based on the detailed performance analysis of the TrieC algorithm, we provide guidance on developing high-performance networking applications for the multi-core and multithreaded architecture.
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