DESA: Distributed Elastic Switch Architecture for efficient networks-on-FPGAS

Networks-on-FPGA consist of a network of switches connected with point-to-point links and can cover sufficiently the communication needs of complex systems implemented on FPGA platforms. The efficient implementation of such networks requires the appropriate tuning of their components to the characteristics of the FPGA's logic and memory resources. In this paper, we present a distributed switch architecture that exploits in the best way the structure of the FPGA and achieves significant area/delay savings when compared to baseline switch architectures; more than 50% increase in operating frequency is achieved for similar area. The proposed switch operates as an elastic pipeline and can be spread throughout the FPGA chip irrespective the topology of the network and without limiting the placement options of the corresponding EDA tools.