SALAD-Nets: Synthesizing Network Accelerators using Programmable Switching Equipment

As programmable network equipment – including programmable switches and SmartNICs – become more commonplace, entire data-centers, both in cloud and edge environments have been equipped to use these devices, introducing a new challenge which is the subject of this proposal: How can developers and operators realize the flexibility and promise of such large-scale programmable networks? Developing specialized programs for each device in the network – either manually or with the help of existing tools – does not scale, and standardizing a common data-plane application across all devices forgoes much of the desired flexibility. Our goal in this project, called SALAD-Nets, is to allow developers, operators, and even cloud customers to design a virtual network of software NFs, and for a synthesizer to map this large-scale distributed network onto the underlying network substrate, as deployed in the data-center. Taking into account each device's capabilities and limitations, SALAD-Nets partitions and optimizes the network functionality, generating the code that powers not only the myriad devices in the network, but also the controller that orchestrates it all to realize on the physical network fabric the same functionality that was specified in the virtual network topology.

People

• Francisco Pereira (IST - U. Lisbon)
• Anup Agarwal (CMU)
• Srinivasan Seshan (CMU)
• Fernando Ramos (IST - U. Lisbon / INESC-ID)
• Luis Pedrosa (IST - U. Lisbon / INESC-ID)