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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

#61

Post by bombcar »

bayindirh wrote: post #36
baq wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It helps that Intel has been contributing to OSS since forever, they have good internal processes established and some orgs develop/contribute to OSS pretty much exclusively.

I think the biggest contributor to these processes was going open source in their graphics drivers. They went from "we have tons of 3rd party IP in these!" to, "you don't need to download anything, it's in kernel mainline now" in a generation and they're off to the races after that. Maybe their Ethernet drivers were open before that, I don't remember but, video drivers made them pass a threshold in maturity IMHO.

The ethernet ones were big for awhile, I can remember when you wanted to go out of your way to get something that worked with the e1000 driver if you wanted reliable, usable gigabit.

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

#62

Post by doctorpangloss »

bayindirh wrote: post #37
ggm wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also was told tofino was looking EOL. Like NUC, dropped from some C suites KPI set and longterm roadmap. I'd love to be wrong, this is just what people said.

However, NUC form factor is more lively than ever before. Maybe someone can grab the language and run for something? Miktrotik guys come into my mind.

It’s complicated. The NUCs had a lot of inevitable catastrophic hardware failures, like NIC ports that would break. Their problem is they were not good.

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

#63

Post by UltraSane »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #62
bayindirh wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, NUC form factor is more lively than ever before. Maybe someone can grab the language and run for something? Miktrotik guys come into my mind.

It’s complicated. The NUCs had a lot of inevitable catastrophic hardware failures, like NIC ports that would break. Their problem is they were not good.

How is a ethernet port breaking "inevitable"?

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

#64

Post by UltraSane »

kogepathic wrote: post #48
eqvinox wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Cisco Meraki did; their low end switches are Marvell and their "high end" switches (MS420, MS425, MS450, MS350, MS355) were all Broadcom based. Were because about a year ago they announced the End of Sale of all Broadcom based switches.…

"Although one can argue everything from Meraki is low end apart from their prices"

This is hilariously accurate.

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

#65

Post by UltraSane »

deivid wrote: post #5

After having used & automated configuration of "traditional" switching/routing devices for years (Cisco , Arista, Juniper), I can't wait for P4 devices to take over

You know all those random python automation scripts network engineers use to configure devices? Now imagine them actually running on device controlling packet and frame flows. Does that sound like it would be fun to troubleshoot?

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

#66

Post by doctorpangloss »

UltraSane wrote: post #63
doctorpangloss wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s complicated. The NUCs had a lot of inevitable catastrophic hardware failures, like NIC ports that would break. Their problem is they were not good.

How is a ethernet port breaking "inevitable"?

100% of the Broadwell NUCs, AFAIK, eventually have the problem, but many were trashed before they did. These issues persisted for years, such as with 10th and 12th generation NUCs. Search "proxmox nuc NIC not working".

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

#67

Post by dfex »

deivid wrote: post #22
dfex wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dream is you never have to rely on buggy vendor software again. The reality is, you end up with a complex stack with no or homegrown documentation that requires experienced engineers to operate and maintain. In some environments, that's a perfectly fair trade-off. In most, it isn't.

The APIs these vendors provide are a joke. A bunch of functionality can only be accessed via scripting interactive CLI commands. Some API endpoints cause short downtime / unexpected behavior (eg: by deleting the routing table and adding all entries back 1 by 1), while the on-device commands do not. And guess what, the switch may decide to print informational or environmental messages interleaved with the command outp…

That was certainly the case 15 years ago.

The only switching/routing vendor with an API worth a damn was Juniper - in fact they were the only vendor who was applying CLI changes to the box via their own API, the Way It Should Be Done™.

These days you are spoilt for choice (and price point) with the likes of Arista, HPe (AOS-CX), Cisco (NX-OS, IOS-XR) and plenty of others entering the space.

Vote with your wallet!

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

#68

Post by fidotron »

baq wrote: post #25
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!)

It helps that Intel has been contributing to OSS since forever, they have good internal processes established and some orgs develop/contribute to OSS pretty much exclusively.

> they have good internal processes established

There are a good number of people that would LOL at this statement, myself included.

Maybe they have such processes now, because at one point . . . Well “mistakes were made”.

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

#69

Post by touisteur »

dist1ll wrote: post #49
eqvinox wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Hopefully they don't axe their NICs. At least Intel provides really good open datasheets for their e800 cards, can't say the same about other vendors.

The absence of anything >200G isn't reassuring there...
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