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Barefoot Networks Brings the Power of P4 Programmability to Open Compute Project's SONiCSAN JOSE, Calif., March 20, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Barefoot Networks, the creator of Barefoot Tofino™, the world’s fastest P4-programmable Ethernet switch ASIC family, and Barefoot Deep Insight™, the world’s first network monitoring and analytics system that relies on the Smart Programmable Real-Time INT (SPRINT) to see what is happening with every packet to the nanosecond, today announced the availability of Open Compute Project’s (OCP) Software for Open Networking in the Cloud (SONiC) on multiple Barefoot Tofino-based bare metal switching platforms.
Powered by Barefoot’s P4-programmable forwarding plane, Switch Abstraction Interface (SAI) implementation for the available SONiC features paves the way for introducing more advanced capabilities, such as data plane telemetry (DTel). Enabled on Tofino using P4 and exposed through the SAI DTel specification, this SONiC feature will be showcased with Barefoot Deep Insight in several demos at the OCP U.S. Summit, to be held March 20-21 in San Jose, CA. As cloud operators scale their networks to deliver new services to a rapidly growing customer base, the speed and agility with which they can adapt their network while maintaining simplicity and security is of paramount importance. Microsoft launched open source project SONiC, which is built on SAI, a common API used to program switching ASICs, to enable operators to find and apply innovations in networking hardware, software and applications under a single solution across multiple platforms. “Working together with the industry’s top switch vendors and seeing their receptivity to sharing open source code has already greatly contributed to the advancement of cloud networking,” said Yousef Khalidi, Corporate VP for Azure Networking at Microsoft Corp. “Barefoot’s unique support of SONiC and implementation of SAI based on its P4-programmable Tofino Ethernet switch is helping to accelerate open networking, ensuring broader availability of innovative networking solutions.” “Barefoot is pleased to work with OCP and Microsoft to bring the unprecedented value of its programmable forwarding plane technology to the OCP ecosystem with the wide adoption and availability of bare metal switching platforms using its Tofino series of P4-programmable Ethernet switch ASICs,” said Ed Doe, VP of Product, Strategy and Business at Barefoot Networks. “Barefoot Tofino running SONiC with DTel SAI APIs enables network operators to take advantage of the benefits of programmable forwarding planes and SPRINT, including increased scale, ability to add new features and per-packet visibility. We are excited to showcase this end-to-end solution with Barefoot Deep Insight providing real-time analysis and visibility into the network.” Wistron NeWeb Corporation (WNC) and Edgecore Networks collaborated with Barefoot to enable SONiC support on respective Tofino-based bare metal switching platforms. The SONiC software on these platforms is fully validated using the community test suite to confirm SAI implementation quality. WNC’s OSW1800 and Edgecore’s Wedge100BF-32X and Wedge100BF-65X switches, with the Tofino ASICs, now support SONiC. As a result, customers can directly download the image from SONiC’s GitHub repository, providing broader and more convenient availability for the solution. "WNC is excited to offer the SONiC open software platform on our Tofino-based solutions," said Gene Chuang, CTO of Networking at WNC. "WNC has spent a considerable amount of time and effort validating the SONiC platform’s performance on our Tofino solutions, which has allowed our partners to seamlessly implement SONiC in their existing Tofino-based WNC systems." “Edgecore sees the demand from our data center, telecom and enterprise customers for open networks that are easily programmable and leverage open source-software platforms,” said Jeff Catlin, VP Technology, Edgecore Networks. “We are pleased to work with Barefoot and the SONiC community to make available Edgecore open network switches incorporating Barefoot Tofino programmable silicon and running SONiC software to meet those requirements.” Tofino uses SPRINT to enable deep visibility, where metadata of interest can be embedded into every packet and delivered to an analytics engine like Barefoot Deep Insight. Barefoot will showcase their integration and support of SONiC, along with the company’s portfolio of products and expertise, including their Deep Insight solution and telemetry capabilities, in the following demos at the OCP U.S. Summit 2018: Demo Name: Barefoot Deep Insight and Telemetry Capabilities Barefoot Tofino is the world's first end-user programmable series of Ethernet switch ASICs. The switch leverages P4 to let customers define forwarding plane functionality in minutes, providing both programmability and performance for a wide array of use cases. Generally available since 2017, Tofino is used by customers in a variety of market segments, including hyperscale data centers, enterprise and service provider to leverage programmability to meet rapidly growing network functionality and performance requirements. Barefoot Deep Insight is the world’s first network monitoring system to provide full visibility into every packet in a network. Deep Insight detects almost any anomaly in the network, including microbursts, congestion problems and load balancing issues. This allows customers to uncover the four ground truths for every packet in their network: 1) How did it get here? 2) Why is it here? 3) How long was it delayed? and 4) Why was it delayed? Deep Insight is available now to key customers and partners. To meet with Barefoot at OCP U.S. Summit, please contact [email protected]. About Barefoot Networks About WNC About Edgecore Networks Barefoot Networks, the Foot Logo, Tofino, SPRINT and Deep Insight are trademarks of Barefoot Networks. Editorial Contact |