P4 GSoC Blog

Welcome to the P4 Google Summer of Code (GSoC) blog! Posts here are the final reports of successfully completed P4 GSoC projects.

BMv2 PNA Support

Abstract As the P4 use cases on the NIC side increase, so does the need for a P4 simulator that supports Portable NIC Architecture (PNA). Currently, the BMv2 simulator only supports the v1model and Portable Switch Architecture (PSA) specifications. This project aims to integrate a minimal core subset of the PNA into the BMv2 and the P4C. The PNA Architecture Block Diagram is shown in below: Goals Create a new target in BMv2 supporting the core subset of PNA Create a new P4C backend for the new BMv2’s PNA NIC target Design test cases to ensure the PNA NIC target is working Results The project successfully creates a new target in BMv2 to support PNA and a corresponding backend in P4C. A test case is implemented to ensure the new PNA NIC target can forward the packets between interfaces. ...

P4 Compiler Documentation

Project Overview The primary objective of this project was to improve the documentation infrastructure of the P4 Compiler (p4c). This involved upgrading tools, automating deployment processes, enhancing the user interface, and ensuring that the documentation is both comprehensive and accessible. The project was aimed at making the documentation easier to maintain and more useful for both developers and users of the P4 language. ...

P4-Enabled Container Migration in Kubernetes

Abstract Kubernetes has recently introduced a container checkpoint/restore (C/R) feature to enable the creation of stateful snapshots for running containers. This feature allows containers to be restarted from checkpoints in different pods, enabling use cases such as live migration of microservices. However, preserving established TCP connections during migration is challenging because Kubernetes dynamically allocates IP addresses to Pods in the cluster. As a result, the restored container will run with a different IP address after migration, while clients will continue to send packets to the old IP address. This project aims to address this problem by developing a P4-based load balancer that keeps track of established TCP connections and routes application traffic to the correct IP address after container migration. ...