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Intel's Tofino P4 Software Is Now Open Source

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Re: Intel's Tofino P4 Software Is Now Open Source

#51

Post by jnf27 »

14 wrote: post #21

Not much to add technically but I am very curious who named it Tofino. Tofino is a city by where I live. It is a beautiful location on the Pacific Ocean on Vancouver Island. A favorite destination for our PM Justin Trudeau. Definitely one of the top 100 beautiful places in the world. When I go there I feel stress leave my body and just enjoy the sounds of the waves crashing and the feeling of the sand on my feet melt…

The founding CEO of Barefoot Networks was big surfer. They used famous surfing spots as the internal names of their ASICs.

Re: Intel's Tofino P4 Software Is Now Open Source

#52

Post by snizovtsev »

dolmen wrote: post #31
wmf wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Intel canceled Tofino two years ago. I'm not complaining but it's weird that they're open sourcing the SDK now. Maybe it's to support Mount Evans.

Releasing dead software that is used only to support dead hardware?

I think half of Tofino's complexity was in their compiler. So it may inspire new hardware vendors to reuse it in some contexts.

Re: Intel's Tofino P4 Software Is Now Open Source

#53

Post by neuroelectron »

trimethylpurine wrote: post #43
dolmen wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well. It looks like abandonning software to the community. From the "P4 workflow" described at https://p4.org/ I see mentions of compiling to x86, but no mention of ARM, and no mention of BPF. So, as someone who discover it, I wonder if this project is still relevant in 2025.

Is x86 dead for wire powered devices? Regardless, OSS is probably the best way to get it onto other architectures.

Basically, now you have to document x86. xD

Re: Intel's Tofino P4 Software Is Now Open Source

#54

Post by nsteel »

eqvinox wrote: post #27
unixhero wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are they making instead?

To my knowledge: nothing. Intel is exiting the network switch silicon business¹. Broadcom and nVidia are dominating (different parts of) the market; Marvell and Microchip are fighting for the scraps. The only "cool" player is Microchip, who have been providing full datasheets, register maps, and open sourcing their drivers for years now. But I'm under no illusions they're doing this out of the goodness of their heart…

> To my knowledge, any switch OEM producing Broadcom-based gear will get their NDAs and silicon access revoked if they so much as dream about making devices with non-Broadcom silicon.

Nokia use Broadcom silicon for low-end, in-house for the rest.

Re: Intel's Tofino P4 Software Is Now Open Source

#55

Post by enragedcacti »

dolmen wrote: post #30
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #17

I’m impressed by the political acumen it takes to get a Corp to release code as OSS. My career has seen at least two chunks of work that would have made great OSS (ie potentially useful outside of the single company) but Incoukd not get past the final hurdle And they would have been nice CV boosters as well (my real motivation!)

Well. It looks like abandonning software to the community. From the "P4 workflow" described at https://p4.org/ I see mentions of compiling to x86, but no mention of ARM, and no mention of BPF. So, as someone who discover it, I wonder if this project is still relevant in 2025.

I'm not familiar with P4 but with some quick digging it seems like the compiler does support eBPF as a target. Additionally, I don't think the compiler outputs x86 directly at all, and instead includes targets like DPDK which supports ARM in addition to x86.

https://github.com/p4lang/p4c

Re: Intel's Tofino P4 Software Is Now Open Source

#56

Post by purpleidea »

Unless there are devices that I could buy (48 port 1U style switches) and until this supports integrating with something like switchdev ( https://docs.kernel.org/networking/switchdev.html ) then this is too little too late. I hope I'm wrong though.

does anyone know if someone can make this switchdev friendly?

Re: Intel's Tofino P4 Software Is Now Open Source

#57

Post by wmf »

0xNOTVALID wrote: post #26
yusyusyus wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ehh scream SDN 5 times. kinda miss the 2010’s now. cisco silicon one uses p4 fwiw. internal development though, but the language makes sense for what the things are.

do they expose the p4 functionality externally? ive heard this from them but never actually seen the proof - it seems like vaporware

I don't think they would lie but they just don't release the compiler. Maybe they give it to Meta.

Re: Intel's Tofino P4 Software Is Now Open Source

#58

Post by wmf »

purpleidea wrote: post #56

Unless there are devices that I could buy (48 port 1U style switches) and until this supports integrating with something like switchdev ( https://docs.kernel.org/networking/switchdev.html ) then this is too little too late. I hope I'm wrong though. does anyone know if someone can make this switchdev friendly?

There have always been Tofino switches available to buy but they were priced for the data center not the home. You can probably find them on eBay now that they're old enough.

Writing a switchdev driver is an enormous amount of work so it only happens when someone (usually the chip vendor) pays for it. Any code open-sourced by Intel probably won't meet Linux kernel standards so it would have to be completely rewritten (like the tg3 driver from the old days).

Re: Intel's Tofino P4 Software Is Now Open Source

#59

Post by wmf »

antithesis-nl wrote: post #15

As far as I can tell, Software Defined Networking (which this is about: "P4 is a domain-specific language for network devices") by now is pretty much a decade-old promise that never materialized. I'd still love to be wrong though! So, let's take the next paragraph: "Before P4, vendors had total control over the functionality supported in the network (...) controlled the rollout of new features (e.g., VXLAN), and roll…

P4 is used by Cisco Silicon One, Xsight, AMD Pensando, Intel Mount Evans, etc. "Contact us" isn't the same thing as vaporware; the Pensando SSDK and Intel ES2K SDE definitely exist for example. I realize it sucks when things aren't available to hobbyists but it's a mistake to pretend it's fake.

P4 is really only needed in data center networks because slower campus/home networks can usually get away with software processing and their lower prices probably can't support the R&D of a programmable architecture.

Re: Intel's Tofino P4 Software Is Now Open Source

#60

Post by rising-sky »

dfex wrote: post #3

Am I mistaken or has Intel pretty much shelved the Tofino switching hardware that supports P4 in the first place? I seem to recall Oxide having to switch suppliers over this?

This was the post by Bryan Cantrill of Oxide on the Tofino saga with Intel

https://bcantrill.dtrace.org/2024/12/08/why-gelsinger-was-wr...

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