A regular expression matching using non-deterministic finite automaton

This paper shows an implementation of CANSCID (Combined Architecture for Stream Categorization and Intrusion Detection). To satisfy the required system throughput, the packet assembler and the regular expression matching are implemented by the dedicated hardware. On the other hand, the counting of matching results and the system control are implemented by a microprocessor. A regular expression matching circuit is performed as follows: First, the given regular expressions are converted into a non-deterministic finite automaton (NFA). Then, to reduce the number of states, the NFA is converted to a modular non-deterministic finite automaton (MNFA(p)) with p-character-consuming transition. Finally, a finite-input memory machine (FIMM) to detect p-characters is generated, and the matching elements (MEs) realizing the states for the MNFA(p) are generated. We loaded 140 regular expressions of the MEMOCODE 2010 design contest on Terasic Corp. DE3 prototyping board (FPGA: Altera's Stratix III). The maximum throughput of our implementation was 798 mega bits per second (Mbps).