On Mon, Mar 4, 2024 at 3:18 PM Jakub Kicinski <kuba@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On Sun, 3 Mar 2024 14:04:11 -0500 Jamal Hadi Salim wrote: > > > At > > > this point in its lifetime, eBPF had far more examples of real world > > > use cases publically available. That being said, there's nothing > > > unique about P4 supporting the network calculator. We could just as > > > easily write this in eBPF (either plain C or P4) and "offload" it to > > > an ARM core on a SmartNIC. > > > > With current port speeds hitting 800gbps you want to use Arm cores as > > your offload engine?;-> Running the generated ebpf on the arm core is > > a valid P4 target. i.e there is no contradiction. > > Note: P4 is a DSL specialized for datapath definition; it is not a > > competition to ebpf, two different worlds. I see ebpf as an > > infrastructure tool, nothing more. > > I wonder how much we're benefiting of calling this thing P4 and how > much we should focus on filling in the tech gaps. We are implementing based on the P4 standard specification. I fear it is confusing to call it something else if everyone else is calling it P4 (including the vendors whose devices are being targeted in case of offload). If the name is an issue, sure we can change. It just so happens that TC has similar semantics to P4 (match action tables) - hence the name P4TC and implementation encompassing code that fits nicely with TC. > Exactly like you said, BPF is not competition, but neither does > the kernel "support P4", any more than it supports bpftrace and: > Like i said if name is an issue, let's change the name;-> > $ git grep --files-with-matches bpftrace > Documentation/bpf/redirect.rst > tools/testing/selftests/bpf/progs/test_xdp_attach_fail.c > > Filling in tech gaps would also help DPP, IDK how much DPP is based > or using P4, neither should I have to care, frankly :S DDP is an Intel specific approach, pre-P4. P4: at least two vendors(on Cc) AMD have NICs with P4 specification and there FPGA variants out there as well. >From my discussions with folks at Intel it is easy to transform DDP to P4. My understanding is it is the same compiler folks. The beauty being you dont have to use the intel version of the loaded program to offload if you wanted to change what the hardware does custom to you (within constraints of what hardware can do). cheers, jamal
