Hello, > -----Original Message----- > From: dev [mailto:dev-boun...@dpdk.org] On Behalf Of Cristian Dumitrescu > Sent: Wednesday, April 18, 2018 8:22 PM > To: dev@dpdk.org > Cc: dan.d...@intel.com > Subject: [dpdk-dev] [RFC] P4 enablement in DPDK > > P4 is a language for programming the data plane of network devices [1]. The > P4 > language is developed by p4.org which is joining ONF and Linux Foundation > [2]. > > This API provides a way to program P4 capable devices through DPDK. The > purpose > of this API is to enable P4 compilers [3] to generate high performance DPDK > code > out of P4 programs. > > The main advantage of this approach is that P4 enablement of network > devices can > be done through DPDK in a unified way: > > 1. This API serves as the interface between the P4 compiler front-end > (target > independent) and the P4 compiler backe-ends (target specific). > > 2. Device vendors develop their device drivers as part of DPDK by > implementing this API. The device driver is agostic of being called by > the > P4 front-end. The device driver serves as the P4 compiler taget specific > back-end. > > 3. The P4 compiler front-end is target independent. The amount of C code it > generates is minimized by calling this API directly for every P4 feature > as opposed to vendor-specific free-style C code generation. > > This API introduces a pipeline device (PDEV) by using a similar approach to > the > existing ethdev and eventdev DPDK device-like APIs implemented by the > DPDK Poll > Mode Drivers (PMDs). Main features: > > 1. Discovery of built-in pipeline devices and their capabilities. > > 2. Creation of new pipelines out of input ports, output ports, tables and > actions. > > 3. Registration of packet protocol header and meta-data fields. > > 4. Action definition for input ports, output ports and tables. > > 5. Pipeline run-time API for table population, statistics read, etc. > > This API targets P4 capable devices such as NICs, FPGAs, NPUs, ASICs, etc, as > well as CPUs. Let’s remember that the first P in P4 stands for Programmable, > and > the CPUs are arguably the most programmable devices. The implementation > for the > CPU SW target is expected to use the DPDK Packet Framework libraries such > as > librte_pipeline, librte_port, librte_table with some expected but moderate > API > and implementation adjustments. > > Links: > > [1] P4-16 language specification: > https://p4lang.github.io/p4-spec/docs/P4-16-v1.0.0-spec.pdf > > [2] p4.org to join ONF and LF: https://p4.org/p4/onward-and-upward.html > > [3] p4c: https://github.com/p4lang/p4c > > Signed-off-by: Cristian Dumitrescu <cristian.dumitre...@intel.com>
+1 for adding P4 support in general. -- Juhamatti
