Design and Component Demonstration of an SFQ Complex Event Detector Corresponding to Regular Expressions

A complex event processor (CEP) is a real-time processing system for extracting meaningful data from an input data stream. One potential application of the CEP system is for a network intrusion detection system (NIDS), which monitors packet data streams in a network to detect packets containing viruses. A complex event detector (CED) circuit performs pattern matching in the CEP system, where high throughput is required. To respond to high throughput, we designed a CED circuit using single-flux-quantum (SFQ) circuits, which have the potential to operate at a very high speed beyond 50 GHz with extremely low power consumption. The proposed SFQ CED circuit corresponds to regular expressions. It consists of a string-matching unit (SMU), which performs string matching, and a state transition unit (STU), a structure mimicking a finite automaton. We designed the fundamental component of the SFQ CED circuit and demonstrated an eight-symbol CED circuit at a maximum operating frequency of 52.9 GHz.