Seminario - Disaggregation and Placement of In-Network Programs

 

Abstract. Programmable network switches and NICs are enabling the execution of increasingly rich computations inside the network using languages like P4. Today's in-network programming approach maps a whole P4 program to a single target, limiting a P4 program's performance and functionality to what a single target device can offer. Disaggregating a single P4 program into subprograms that execute across different targets can improve performance, utilization, and cost. But doing this manually     is tedious, error-prone and must be repeated as topologies or hardware resources change. This talk describes Flightplan: a target-agnostic, programming toolchain that helps with splitting a P4 program into a set of cooperating P4 programs and maps them to run as a distributed system formed of several, possibly heterogeneous targets. The talk will cover both systems' and programming language aspects of this research. We'll look at evaluation results from testbed experiments and simulation. During the talk I’ll also describe how Flightplan's design addresses practical concerns, including the provision of a distributed diagnostics interface and the mitigation of  partial failures. Code, documentation, tests, a demo, and videos can be obtained from https://flightplan.cis.upenn.edu