Regex Matching
All standard ANIC packet processing functions operate at the lower levels of the OSI model; specifically layers 2, 3 and 4. However, with specialized code an ANIC SmartNIC can also match alphanumeric patterns that are referred to as regex or regular expressions. This is particularly useful if someone wants to examine application level data (think emails or web pages) for certain key phrases or patterns.
Regex manipulation is very common in high level programming or scripting languages such as Perl. With regex these programming languages use string searching algorithms for “find” or “find and replace” operations on strings. For example, you might do a search on an email (or many emails) to see how many times a specific person’s name was referenced.
Regex matching is a very powerful tool for network monitoring, security and other use cases. If you couple the processing power of an ANIC SmartNIC with a strong regex engine the possibilities are vast.
To learn more about how Accolade can help with FPGA-powered regex matching, please contact us at [email protected].