Investigation into Programmability for Layer 2 Protocol Frame Delineation Architectures

Abstract

This paper presents the design and study of reconfigurable architectures for two data-link layer frame delineation techniques used for ATM and GFP. The architectures are targeted to Altera Stratix II FPGA technology and are investigated in terms of performance and area. This work addresses the potential for incorporating programmability into custom purpose architectures that could enable the same processing hardware to be used for processing multiple protocols. 1