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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

#71

Post by mikeyhew »

bcantrill wrote: post #10
danpalmer wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They spoke on their podcast (I think it was there?) about ditching Tofino for the next generation of the Oxide computer. So it sounds like the current model will always ship with Tofino, but due to no future product development they won't use it again in a new machine. It sounded like they had just secured a replacement for the future but I can't remember who it was.

We've talked about it a bunch, most recently when talking about Intel after Gelsinger.[0] I went into more detail on Intel's total mishandling of Tofino in my blog entry describing why Gelsinger was the wrong choice to lead Intel in 2021.[1] As you might imagine, this move from Intel is something that we at Oxide have advocated for strenuously -- and it is a tremendous tribute to the former Tofino team at Intel that…

Does this move to open source P4 have any impact on Oxide at all, or is it too little too late?

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

#72

Post by FuriouslyAdrift »

enragedcacti wrote: post #55
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.

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

There's a bunch of network operating systems that use P4 (Arista EOS, Cisco NX-OS, IPinfusion OCNOS, Microsoft SONiC, etc)

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

#73

Post by Twirrim »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #66
UltraSane wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Broadwell is gonna broadwell. I won't ever trust their NICs ever again. They've been way too much pain with them both personally and professionally.

Their firmware is crap quality, and their bugs are just absolutely astoundingly bad.

At one job we literally had to fix their firmware for them after several months of back-and-forth, engineers spotted the absurdly obvious bug in minutes of seeing their code.

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

#74

Post by 14 »

bnchrch wrote: post #50
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…

Same here! Im living over in Comox and spend a lot of time in Tofino / Ucluelet. Best part of all of Canada in my opinion. I particularly enjoy the winter trips to SF to show my colleagues pictures of the latest cold water surf adventure.

Nice we are basically neighbors you have to drive past my house to get to Tofino. If you are ever passing by always like making new like minded friends.

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

#75

Post by bcantrill »

mikeyhew wrote: post #71
bcantrill wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've talked about it a bunch, most recently when talking about Intel after Gelsinger.[0] I went into more detail on Intel's total mishandling of Tofino in my blog entry describing why Gelsinger was the wrong choice to lead Intel in 2021.[1] As you might imagine, this move from Intel is something that we at Oxide have advocated for strenuously -- and it is a tremendous tribute to the former Tofino team at Intel that…

Does this move to open source P4 have any impact on Oxide at all, or is it too little too late?

We definitely advocated for it (at all stages of our interaction with Tofino -- but especially strenuously after the part was killed), and it does have impact on us in that it was one of the few parts of our stack that we couldn't open (and now we can -- stay tuned there). We remain big believers in P4 and want to see P4 compilers for other switching silicon, so getting an open is a big step in that direction. I would also say that what Intel did here beat our expectations, and includes many aspects of their software that we didn't think they would make available. So even though we will be moving beyond Tofino, getting their software open source is great and we're very supportive -- and if anything, it just sharpens for us what a poor strategic decision it was to kill Tofino.

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

#76

Post by luckman212 »

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.

What's the best "NUC-like" product on the market now? I know ASUS has their lineup of "NUC" that was spun off from Intel. I have used MSI's "Cubi" which was a pretty nice kit. And I know everyone drools over Minisforum stuff (which is expensive but very nicely designed). Any other notable ones?

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

#77

Post by bayindirh »

luckman212 wrote: post #76
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.

What's the best "NUC-like" product on the market now? I know ASUS has their lineup of "NUC" that was spun off from Intel. I have used MSI's "Cubi" which was a pretty nice kit. And I know everyone drools over Minisforum stuff (which is expensive but very nicely designed). Any other notable ones?

Depends on what you want. Currently my focus is N100 based systems to use as lightweight personal computers and small servers (if you can find fanless versions).

I have BeeLink S12 Pro, which I post this comment from, and I like it. However I/O wise, it's not the fastest (x1 NVMe + 2.5" SATA SSD). I also have a GMKTec G3, which has a x2 NVMe and M.2 SATA Slot. I have recently seen a "Minix Z100" fanless, which has x4 NVMe but no SATA, however it has 2.5gbE. Lastly, my parents are using a similar N95 system on Windows 11, and it works pretty nicely for them. All of these systems support 32GB of single channel RAM, but they're plenty fast for simple jobs or simple desktop systems which you won't try to conquer the world.

If you have no power/heat/noise/money upper limit, you can get them in more packed configurations, but that's not what I need, actually.

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

#78

Post by vriendspookstem »

mmmBacon wrote: post #14
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?

P4 has more or less gone nowhere. Tofino was a full generation behind and didn’t make sense. P4 was compelling because people thought they’d solve the Elephant flow problem with traffic engineering in P4 but the resources to actually do this at scale never materialized for many reasons.

P4 as a language is still used on some programmable NICs for describing packet parsing dataplanes and exists as an HDL. Unfortunately the SDKs are not always exposed to small scale companies or universities like Intel did with Tofino.

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

#79

Post by vriendspookstem »

wmf wrote: post #57
0xNOTVALID wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

yes,they might provide it to hyperscalers or allows them to customize some of the packet parsing pipeline for these companies.

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

#80

Post by RhettS »

There's more to this than meets the eye. We are building the world's first open, softwre only, intelligent, content-aware switches. Dual protocol stacks, our SPAN-AI and TCP/IP. This saves us having to develop the TCP/IP stack and a bunch of router code. Brilliant. It also opens up the market for Intel X86 based "Smart Switches" i.e. X86 servers with SmartNICs which is our first platform. Again very smart. This may the first glimmerings of the new Intel. We hope so! Rhett, founder CTO of https://gtsystems.io/
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