A low latency asynchronous Jenkins hash engine for IP lookup
Prashant Dabholkar, Renuka Sovani, Paul Beckett · 2016
Hash computation is an important component of many high speed network devices that employ them for longest prefix matching. With growing line rates it is essential that this critic l component be implemented in hardware to reduce both power and latency. In this paper, we focus on the issue of latency. Null Convention Logic (NCL) is a popular asynchronous design technique that is known to offer robustness to PVT variability as well as potential speed and power advantages. We propose and analyse a NCL implementation of the popular non-cryptographic Jenkins hash algorithm and compare it against an equivalent clocked synchronous implementation, demonstrating a 5x improvement in latency for the same average throughput.