Student research opportunities
Accelerating Deep Packet Inspection (and other applications) Using GPUs
Project Code: CECS_937
This project is available at the following levels:
CS single semester, Honours, Summer Scholar, Masters
Keywords:
high performance computing, performance analysis, general-purpose graphics processing units, network security
Supervisor:
Dr Peter StrazdinsOutline:
Deep Packet Inspection is an important technique for detection of network traffic anomolies.It can detect attempted or successful intrusion or legitimate traffic that causes congestion problems. There is a tradeoff between the quality of analysis and the power of the computing resources required. It is often carried out at major network hubs (such as at SJTU in China), where there is a very large flow of traffic. Thus, to reach its full usefulness, the analysis must be completed in real-time.
The tremendous computing power of General-Purpose Graphics Processing Units (GPGPUs or simply GPUs) have the potential to overcome this problem; however, their efficient programming is a non-trivial exercise.
This project will investigate accelerating Deep Packet Inspection using GPUs. Other applications of interstet to both SJTU and ANU (e.g. Particle in Cell code from Laser Plasma) may be considered instead.
Goals of this project
This project will investigate how selected parts of a suitable Deep Packet Inspection application may be implemented an a GPGPU using CUDA or OpenACC/MHPP. comparing various techniques. In particular, it will involve: setting up and profiling a representative workload; analyzing and isolating kernels which would be fruitful for GPU implementation; implementing these kernels,
evaluating their performance. Developing test harnesses for these kernels is highly desirable; this and developing methodologies for this kind of development could be used to strengthen the project's software engineering emphasis.
Requirements/Prerequisites
Note: prior GPU experience is recommended for 12-unit project courses
Student Gain
GPUs are a hot technology; Deep Packet Inspection is a hot applications.
This project is of interest to collaborators in the NVIDA Cetner of Excellence at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, which hosts on of China's major network hubs. Travel opportunities may be available for suitably qualified Honours students.
Background Literature
PacketShader: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1851207
Regex matching: http://www.springerlink.com/content/b3m7662014272t8m/
MiDEA - Intrusion detection: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2046741
Links
CUDAGPU-related bits from COMP8320
HMPP CoC for APAC
CAPS compiler
