High-Performance Match-Action Table Updates from within Programmable Software Data Planes

Manuel Simon, Henning Stubbe, Dominik Scholz, Sebastian Gallenmüller, Georg Carle

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

For long, P4's mantra was that table entries could only be updated by the control plane. With the ongoing Portable NIC Architecture (PNA) standardization efforts, this is changing. In fact, PNA presumably includes explicit methods for table updates from within the data planes. Now, it is onto manufacturers and developers to integrate and use this mechanism in future P4 data planes. This would enable novel and improved applications, e.g., requiring means for maintaining state. We present our implementation of flexible match-action tables for the DPDK-based t4p4s target. We discuss different approaches for table updates from within the data plane and challenges that arise when operating at line rate. Further, we analyze the data consistency of our enhanced table structures in a multi-core scenario and model the memory overhead for state management purposes.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationANCS 2021 - Proceedings of the 2021 Symposium on Architectures for Networking and Communications Systems
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery, Inc
Pages102-108
Number of pages7
ISBN (Electronic)9781450391689
DOIs
StatePublished - 13 Dec 2021
Event16th ACM/IEEE Symposium on Architectures for Networking and Communications Systems, ANCS 2021 - Virtual, Online, United States
Duration: 13 Dec 202116 Dec 2021

Publication series

NameANCS 2021 - Proceedings of the 2021 Symposium on Architectures for Networking and Communications Systems

Conference

Conference16th ACM/IEEE Symposium on Architectures for Networking and Communications Systems, ANCS 2021
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityVirtual, Online
Period13/12/2116/12/21

Keywords

  • P4
  • SDN
  • Software Data Planes
  • State Management

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