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Main Authors: Liu, Yang, Zhu, Wenjun, Chang, Harry, Hong, Yang, Langdale, Geoff, Qiu, Kun, Zhao, Jin
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.07123
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author Liu, Yang
Zhu, Wenjun
Chang, Harry
Hong, Yang
Langdale, Geoff
Qiu, Kun
Zhao, Jin
author_facet Liu, Yang
Zhu, Wenjun
Chang, Harry
Hong, Yang
Langdale, Geoff
Qiu, Kun
Zhao, Jin
contents Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) has been extensively employed for network security. It examines traffic payloads by searching for regular expressions (regex) with the Deterministic Finite Automaton (DFA) model. However, as the network bandwidth and ruleset size are increasing rapidly, the conventional DFA model has emerged as a significant performance bottleneck of DPI. Leveraging the Single-Instruction-Multiple-Data (SIMD) instruction to perform state transitions can substantially boost the efficiency of the DFA model. In this paper, we propose Hyperflex, a novel SIMD-based DFA model designed for high-performance regex matching. Hyperflex incorporates a region detection algorithm to identify regions suitable for acceleration by SIMD instructions across the whole DFA graph. Also, we design a hybrid state transition algorithm that enables state transition in both SIMD-accelerated and normal regions, and ensures seamless state transition across the two types of regions. We have implemented Hyperflex on the commodity CPU and evaluated it with real network traffic and DPI regexes. Our evaluation results indicate that Hyperflex reaches a throughput of 8.89Gbit/s, representing an improvement of up to 2.27 times over Mcclellan, the default DFA model of the prominent multi-pattern regex matching engine Hyperscan. As a result, Hyperflex has been successfully deployed in Hyperscan, significantly enhancing its performance.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_07123
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Hyperflex: A SIMD-based DFA Model for Deep Packet Inspection
Liu, Yang
Zhu, Wenjun
Chang, Harry
Hong, Yang
Langdale, Geoff
Qiu, Kun
Zhao, Jin
Networking and Internet Architecture
Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) has been extensively employed for network security. It examines traffic payloads by searching for regular expressions (regex) with the Deterministic Finite Automaton (DFA) model. However, as the network bandwidth and ruleset size are increasing rapidly, the conventional DFA model has emerged as a significant performance bottleneck of DPI. Leveraging the Single-Instruction-Multiple-Data (SIMD) instruction to perform state transitions can substantially boost the efficiency of the DFA model. In this paper, we propose Hyperflex, a novel SIMD-based DFA model designed for high-performance regex matching. Hyperflex incorporates a region detection algorithm to identify regions suitable for acceleration by SIMD instructions across the whole DFA graph. Also, we design a hybrid state transition algorithm that enables state transition in both SIMD-accelerated and normal regions, and ensures seamless state transition across the two types of regions. We have implemented Hyperflex on the commodity CPU and evaluated it with real network traffic and DPI regexes. Our evaluation results indicate that Hyperflex reaches a throughput of 8.89Gbit/s, representing an improvement of up to 2.27 times over Mcclellan, the default DFA model of the prominent multi-pattern regex matching engine Hyperscan. As a result, Hyperflex has been successfully deployed in Hyperscan, significantly enhancing its performance.
title Hyperflex: A SIMD-based DFA Model for Deep Packet Inspection
topic Networking and Internet Architecture
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.07123