Re: Barefoot "Tofino": 6.4 Tbps whitebox switch silicon?

2016-06-16 Thread Peter Phaal 
On Thu, Jun 16, 2016 at 1:19 AM, Saku Ytti  wrote:
> On 16 June 2016 at 06:21, Eric Kuhnke  wrote:
>> Based on their investors, could have interesting results for much lower
>> cost 100GbE whitebox switches.
>
> Why lower cost? The BOM isn't the expensive part, the code is the
> expensive part. Only way I see this happening, is if we get open
> source routing suite for the box, i.e. 0 cost software.

It shouldn't be long before we see open source routing suites (Bird,
Quagga, GoBGP, etc) running on Linux (ONL, OS10, OpenSwitch). There is
a P4 program that implements the Switch Abstraction Interface (SAI),
which provides a common interface, device independent, interface to
merchant silicon.

http://p4.org/p4/an-open-source-p4-switch-with-sai-support/

A quick way to do interesting things with the programmable data plane
is to use P4 to augment the basic switching / routing behavior
provided by SAI: moving resources from layer 2 tables to layer 3
tables, adding telemetry, adding additional control capabilities,
etc.:

http://blog.sflow.com/2016/06/programmable-hardware-barefoot-networks.html

Re: Barefoot "Tofino": 6.4 Tbps whitebox switch silicon?

2016-06-16 Thread Colton Conor 
Saku,

I agree completely. Isn't this what Arista did? They coded from like 2004
to 2008 before launching EOS using commercial  chipsets. You seem to really
understand routing software, so I would love to hear your take on Arista
EOS.

On Thu, Jun 16, 2016 at 3:19 AM, Saku Ytti  wrote:

> On 16 June 2016 at 06:21, Eric Kuhnke  wrote:
> > Based on their investors, could have interesting results for much lower
> > cost 100GbE whitebox switches.
>
> Why lower cost? The BOM isn't the expensive part, the code is the
> expensive part. Only way I see this happening, is if we get open
> source routing suite for the box, i.e. 0 cost software.
>
> If you're thinking of writing your own routing suite, even if your
> requirements are trivial, it's still probably take 2-3 years and
> +2MUSD in salaries, and then maintenance +300kUSD/year in salaries.
> Need quite significant annual unit number scale to make it cheap.
>
> I'm quite fascinated by the idea of doing something really novel in
> routing suite space, but I don't see how it could possibly work
> commercially. How many customers would there be for licensing COTS
> routing-suite when costs are millions annually to develop it for
> general use-case.
>
> --
>   ++ytti
>

Re: Barefoot "Tofino": 6.4 Tbps whitebox switch silicon?

2016-06-16 Thread Prem Jonnalagadda 
On Wed, Jun 15, 2016 at 8:31 PM, Ca By  wrote:

> On Wednesday, June 15, 2016, Eric Kuhnke  wrote:
>
> > a lot of PR fluff, but this may be of interest:
> >
> >
> >
> http://www.wired.com/2016/06/barefoot-networks-new-chips-will-transform-tech-industry/
> >
> >
> >
> https://barefootnetworks.com/media/white_papers/Barefoot-Worlds-Fastest-Most-Programmable-Networks.pdf
> >
> >
> > Based on their investors, could have interesting results for much lower
> > cost 100GbE whitebox switches.
> >
>
> Where is the price tag? Why would you think it is inexpensive?
>
> I do think p4 is very interesting, but is it really much different from
> openflow?


Great question!

OpenFlow enabled decoupling of the control plane from the data plane,
whereas P4 allows you to define the data plane. Check out this popular P4
program that defines the data plane of a L2/L3 switch -
https://github.com/p4lang/switch/tree/master/p4src

OpenFlow is a protocol, whereas P4 is a programming language. You can use
OpenFlow controller to control a P4 data plane - Check out this OpenFlow
agent on top of a P4 data plane - https://github.com/p4lang/p4ofagent

Check out this blog post which explains the differences between P4 and
OpenFlow quite well -
http://p4.org/p4/clarifying-the-differences-between-p4-and-openflow/

More questions? Shoot me an email :-)

Which...umm ... Did not succeed in the market.
>

Re: Barefoot "Tofino": 6.4 Tbps whitebox switch silicon?

2016-06-16 Thread Jennifer Rexford 

> I do think p4 is very interesting, but is it really much different from
> openflow? Which...umm ... Did not succeed in the market.

P4 is quite different from OpenFlow.  The various generations of the OpenFlow 
specification assume a fixed-format packet header with an ever increasing 
number of header fields (from 12 in OF 1.0 to 41 in OF 1.4), a fixed set of 
packet-processing actions, and so on. P4 allows programmable parsing and 
flexible match-action processing.  In P4, the program tells the data plane how 
to act; in OpenFlow, the way the data plane can act is “baked” in advance.  So, 
OpenFlow 1.x can be one of many *programs* you can write in P4, whereas many 
other P4 programs can exist.  For some discussion of the differences, see

  Clarifying the differences between P4 and OpenFlow
  http://p4.org/p4/clarifying-the-differences-between-p4-and-openflow/ 


— Jen

Re: Barefoot "Tofino": 6.4 Tbps whitebox switch silicon?

2016-06-16 Thread Saku Ytti 
On 16 June 2016 at 06:21, Eric Kuhnke  wrote:
> Based on their investors, could have interesting results for much lower
> cost 100GbE whitebox switches.

Why lower cost? The BOM isn't the expensive part, the code is the
expensive part. Only way I see this happening, is if we get open
source routing suite for the box, i.e. 0 cost software.

If you're thinking of writing your own routing suite, even if your
requirements are trivial, it's still probably take 2-3 years and
+2MUSD in salaries, and then maintenance +300kUSD/year in salaries.
Need quite significant annual unit number scale to make it cheap.

I'm quite fascinated by the idea of doing something really novel in
routing suite space, but I don't see how it could possibly work
commercially. How many customers would there be for licensing COTS
routing-suite when costs are millions annually to develop it for
general use-case.

-- 
  ++ytti

Re: Barefoot "Tofino": 6.4 Tbps whitebox switch silicon?

2016-06-16 Thread Pavel Odintsov 
Looks very promising!

On Thu, Jun 16, 2016 at 6:21 AM, Eric Kuhnke  wrote:
> a lot of PR fluff, but this may be of interest:
>
> http://www.wired.com/2016/06/barefoot-networks-new-chips-will-transform-tech-industry/
>
> https://barefootnetworks.com/media/white_papers/Barefoot-Worlds-Fastest-Most-Programmable-Networks.pdf
>
>
> Based on their investors, could have interesting results for much lower
> cost 100GbE whitebox switches.



-- 
Sincerely yours, Pavel Odintsov

Re: Barefoot "Tofino": 6.4 Tbps whitebox switch silicon?

2016-06-15 Thread Ca By 
On Wednesday, June 15, 2016, Eric Kuhnke  wrote:

> a lot of PR fluff, but this may be of interest:
>
>
> http://www.wired.com/2016/06/barefoot-networks-new-chips-will-transform-tech-industry/
>
>
> https://barefootnetworks.com/media/white_papers/Barefoot-Worlds-Fastest-Most-Programmable-Networks.pdf
>
>
> Based on their investors, could have interesting results for much lower
> cost 100GbE whitebox switches.
>

Where is the price tag? Why would you think it is inexpensive?

I do think p4 is very interesting, but is it really much different from
openflow? Which...umm ... Did not succeed in the market.

Barefoot "Tofino": 6.4 Tbps whitebox switch silicon?

2016-06-15 Thread Eric Kuhnke 
a lot of PR fluff, but this may be of interest:

http://www.wired.com/2016/06/barefoot-networks-new-chips-will-transform-tech-industry/

https://barefootnetworks.com/media/white_papers/Barefoot-Worlds-Fastest-Most-Programmable-Networks.pdf


Based on their investors, could have interesting results for much lower
cost 100GbE whitebox switches.