Abstract:
String/Regular-Expression Matching is widely used in different applications. Our work
is concerned with high-throughput regular-expression matching in the context of
Intrusion Detection Systems as it is the most computationally intensive part of the
operation. The results, however, should be equally applicable to other domains that
require fast regular-expression matching. The major contribution of this paper is a
reconfigurable architecture that performs regular-expression matching on a multi-byte
per clock cycle basis. We are able to explore the system performance for different byteprocessing
rates – from 4 to 64 – by automating the VHDL-generation process and
implementing the resulting circuits on a general-purpose FPGA. Theoretical expressions
for resource usage (cost) as a function of byte-rate and pattern-length are also presented.