NaNet: a flexible and configurable low-latency NIC for real-time trigger systems based on GPUs

NaNet is an FPGA-based PCIe X8 Gen2 NIC supporting 1/10 GbE links and the custom 34 Gbps APElink channel. The design has GPUDirect RDMA capabilities and features a network stack protocol offloading module, making it suitable for building low-latency, real-time GPU-based computing systems. We provide a detailed description of the NaNet hardware modular architecture. Benchmarks for latency and bandwidth for GbE and APElink channels are presented, followed by a performance analysis on the case study of the GPU-based low level trigger for the RICH detector in the NA62 CERN experiment, using either the NaNet GbE and APElink channels. Finally, we give an outline of project future activities.
Proceedings for the TWEPP 2013 - Topical Workshop on Electronics for Particle Physics workshop