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.