Patent Document ID: 9983876
Application ID: 14184751
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A non-deterministic finite state machine module for use in a regular expression matching system, comprising: a computational unit implementing a non-deterministic finite state machine representing a regular expression, wherein the computational unit is configured to: receive an input data stream, wherein an occurrence of the regular expression is determined, and an activation signal; process the input data stream with respect to the non-deterministic finite state machine depending on the activation signal; indicate a start offset in the input stream of the regular expression match; and provide at least one branch data output for initializing an additional non-deterministic finite state machine module if the processing of an element of the input data stream according to the non-deterministic finite state machine results in a branching of a processing thread; wherein the non-deterministic finite state machine module allows for a scalable regular expression matching system to be computed in parallel; wherein the at least one branch data output includes a branch flag output to provide a branch flag information to activate the additional non-deterministic finite state machine module; wherein the at least one branch data output includes a branch configuration output to provide a branch configuration information including at least one branch offset information to forward an indication about a start offset of the input data stream or at least one capturing group start and end offset outputs to forward an indication about the start and end offsets of the at least one capturing group in the input data stream; wherein the at least one branch data output include a match output information to indicate when a regular expression match occurs; and wherein the at least one branch data output include a branch state information to provide an indication of a state to be processed next in the additional non-deterministic finite state machine module to be activated.