research-article

P4RROT: Generating P4 Code for the Application Layer

Authors:

Csaba Györgyi,

Stefan SchmidAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, Volume 53, Issue 1

Pages 30 - 37

https://doi.org/10.1145/3594255.3594258

Published: 20 April 2023 Publication History

Abstract

Throughput and latency critical applications could often benefit of performing computations close to the client. To enable this, distributed computing paradigms such as edge computing have recently emerged. However, with the advent of programmable data planes, computations cannot only be performed by servers but they can be offloaded to network switches. Languages like P4 enable to flexibly reprogram the entire packet processing pipeline. Though these devices promise high throughput and ultra-low response times, implementing application-layer tasks in the data plane programming language P4 is still challenging for an application developer who is not familiar with networking domain. In this paper, we first identify and examine obstacles and pain points one can experience when offloading server-based computations to the network. Then we present P4rrot, a code generator (in form of a library) which allows to overcome these limitations by providing a user-friendly API to describe computations to be offloaded. After discussing the design choices behind P4rrot, we introduce our proof-of-concept implementation for two P4 targets: Netronome SmartNIC and BMv2. To demonstrate the applicability of P4rrot, we investigate case studies in the context of publish-subscribe sensor data processing and real-time data streaming, supporting, in particular, MQTT-SN and MoldUDP packets.

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Cited By

Karlos GBal HWang L(2024)NetCL: A Unified Programming Framework for In-Network ComputingProceedings of the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis10.1109/SC41406.2024.00051(1-20)Online publication date: 17-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/SC41406.2024.00051
Dumitru MBădoiu VGherghescu ARaiciu C(2024)Generating P4 Dataplanes Using LLMs2024 IEEE 25th International Conference on High Performance Switching and Routing (HPSR)10.1109/HPSR62440.2024.10635926(31-36)Online publication date: 22-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/HPSR62440.2024.10635926
Györgyi CLaki SSchmid S(2023)Toward Highly Reliable Programmable Data Planes: Verification of P4 Code Generation2023 IEEE 9th International Conference on Network Softwarization (NetSoft)10.1109/NetSoft57336.2023.10175397(1-5)Online publication date: 19-Jun-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/NetSoft57336.2023.10175397

Index Terms

P4RROT: Generating P4 Code for the Application Layer
1. Networks
  1. Network services
    1. In-network processing
    2. Programmable networks
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. Compilers
      1. Source code generation

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Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review

ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review Volume 53, Issue 1

January 2023

70 pages

ISSN:0146-4833

DOI:10.1145/3594255

Editor:
Steve Uhlig
School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, Queen Mary, University of London, London, United Kingdom

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2023 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s).

Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 20 April 2023

Published in SIGCOMM-CCR Volume 53, Issue 1

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Ministry of Innovation and Technology of Hungary from the National Research, Development and Innovation
German Bundesministerium fur Bildung und Forschung (BMBF)

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Cited By

Karlos GBal HWang L(2024)NetCL: A Unified Programming Framework for In-Network ComputingProceedings of the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis10.1109/SC41406.2024.00051(1-20)Online publication date: 17-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/SC41406.2024.00051
Dumitru MBădoiu VGherghescu ARaiciu C(2024)Generating P4 Dataplanes Using LLMs2024 IEEE 25th International Conference on High Performance Switching and Routing (HPSR)10.1109/HPSR62440.2024.10635926(31-36)Online publication date: 22-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/HPSR62440.2024.10635926
Györgyi CLaki SSchmid S(2023)Toward Highly Reliable Programmable Data Planes: Verification of P4 Code Generation2023 IEEE 9th International Conference on Network Softwarization (NetSoft)10.1109/NetSoft57336.2023.10175397(1-5)Online publication date: 19-Jun-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/NetSoft57336.2023.10175397

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