We are pleased to announce the 2017 NetFPGA Design Challenge!

NetFPGA platforms are used by the networked systems community for close to a decade. The platforms enable researchers and instructors to build high-speed, hardware-accelerated networking systems. The platforms can be used by researchers to prototype advanced services for next-generation networked systems. By using Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), NetFPGA enables new types of packet routing circuits to be implemented and detailed measurements of network traffic to be obtained.

The NetFPGA 2017 contest is a design challenge. The design teams are to produce a working implementation employing any HW and SW design methodology and targeting the NetFPGA SUME platform. The deadline for submissions is April 13th, 2017. The winners will be announced at the NetFPGA Developers Summit (Thursday 20th - Friday, 21st April, 2017 Cambridge, UK).

Challenge: Lowest Latency Switch

Low latency devices are being increasingly used across a large number of applications. Low latency solutions are few, and are rarely open source. The goal of this challenge is to provide a usable, high performance, open source alternative to use by universities and organizations who need the flexibility of open source.
The systems will be evaluated using OSNT, an Open Source Network Tester. Test benches will be available online, for users to experiment and independently evaluate their design. The competition is open to students of all levels (undergraduate and postgraduate), as well as to non students. There is no need to own a NetFPGA SUME platform to take part in the competition although, clearly, development and testing will be made easier if you have access to this platform.

Team Prizes:
First place: 500GBP
Best students project: 500GBP

The winning projects and runner ups will be invited to present their work at the NetFPGA Developers Summit 2017.
All challenge participants are keenly encouraged to attend the NetFPGA Developers Summit and are entitled to a reduced registration rate.

The design challenge prizes are generously supported by IMC http://www.imc.nl/

More details can be found at:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/srg/netfpga/challenge2017

Good luck!
The NetFPGA Team
http://www.netfpga.org