Finite State Technology Labs
(Contact: Dr. Bruce Watson)
FST Labs
delivers high-performance hardware and software intellectual property for use
in network security sensors, classifiers, file antivirus, etc.
The
technologies include pattern matching and stream-transformation engines based
on leading research in finite state techniques.
- Unlimited multiple input streams can be dealt
with simultaneously, making it suitable for fire-walling, network
sniffing, etc.
- There is no fixed upper-limit on the number and
size of patterns.
- Multi-threaded solutions for multi-processing
hardware.
- The set of patterns is real-time updatable,
online, incrementally, or offline.
- Engines can be cascaded, for example to: first
sweep a stream for potential matches, then (on a separate processor) sweep
potential matches more precisely.
- Highly memory-efficient representation of lookup
tables.
- Support for hot-path optimization in the pattern matcher, for frequently
occurring patterns.
- Hybrid hardware/software and pure hardware
(based on FPGA or ASIC) versions are in design.
- Pure software versions are in C, C++ and
assembler (for building and using pattern matchers) with explicit use of
modern bitwise parallel units including those in Cell/Altivec and
Intel/AMD SSE.
- Several types of pattern matching are supported:
exact (regex), extended regex, in-exact (approximate) patterns. Pattern types may be mixed.
- Viable platforms include: Linux, VxWorks,
Windows, MacOSX, FreeBSD/OpenBSD.