T4P4S: A Target-independent Compiler for Protocol-independent Packet Processors

摘要

T4P4S stands for Translator for P4 Switches and its implementation is available at https://github.com/P4ELTE/t4p4s., a multi-target compiler generating high performance switch programs from P4 descriptions. To support multiple targets, a networking hardware abstraction layer (NetHAL) is defined; the compiler generates a core switch code which is then linked with a target-specific NetHAL implementation. To avoid performance degradation, the boundaries of this separation should be chosen carefully, since the core program is only responsible for target-independent optimization, while the implementation of NetHAL should cover target-dependent enhancements. To analyze the performance, thorough measurements have been carried out, showing that the switch generated by T4P4S can easily scale beyond 100 Gbps.