Complex Event Detection at Wire Speed with FPGAs

Complex event detection is an advanced form of data stream processing where the stream(s) are scrutinized to identify given event patterns. The challenge for many complex event processing (CEP) systems is to be able to evaluate event patterns on high-volume data streams while adhering to realtime constraints. To solve this problem, in this paper we present a hardware based complex event detection system implemented on field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). By inserting the FPGA directly into the data path between the network interface and the CPU, our solution can detect complex events at gigabit wire speed with constant and fully predictable latency, independently of network load, packet size or data distribution. This is a significant improvement over CPU based systems and an architectural approach that opens up interesting opportunities for hybrid stream engines that combine the flexibility of the CPU with the parallelism and processing power of FPGAs.