CodiLime presents cutting-edge approach to SmartNICs programming at SmartNICs Summit 2023

In June, CodiLime’s team will have the pleasure of sharing our expertise and advancements in SmartNIC technology during the SmartNICs Summit 2023 in San Jose, CA. During this event, we’ll share insights in panel discussions and presentations. Find out what we have prepared for summit participants.

The summit will take place on June 13 to 15, 2023. During these three days, our SmartNIC experts will share their expertise in a panel discussion and three talks.

Panel on “The Best Way to Program SmartNICs Today”

During this panel, our engineering director Krzysztof Wróbel will share his insights in a discussion about the best way to program SmartNICs today. Other speakers that will join him are Leonid Grossman, Director of GPU Cloud Networking at NVIDIA, Itay Ozery, Director Product Marketing at NVIDIA, and Mario Baldi, Fellow at AMD.

During the session, interlocutors will explore the issue of software development for SmartNICs, which can be costly and time-consuming. Another challenge is an insufficient number of units that would allow amortization to be effective. Also, many standard operating systems and development environments are available only for X86 processors, not the ARM or RISC-V cores commonly used in SmartNICs. The addition of other computing elements, such as GPUs, DPUs, and AI chips, further complicates the process.

All of these factors affect SmartNIC development and the panelists will explore ways of overcoming these obstacles. They’ll discuss the usage of open-source software (for example, the P4 network programming language), commercial modules or IP as an answer, and the limitations of these solutions.

“Generating Packets with SmartNICs and the P4 Language”

During this talk, our Senior Software Engineer Marcin Parafiniuk will present his proof of concept on using the P4 language and SmartNICs for packet generation.

To create SmartNIC applications, you need a platform that can handle both software and hardware development. For instance, let's consider building a full-fledged traffic generator, not just a filtering or forwarding engine. While the P4 programming language is commonly used for developing complex switches, implementing the basic functionalities of the generator is challenging because the toolsets provided by SmartNIC manufacturers lack the necessary features.

Marcin will present a study case about how we can approach the development of such complex applications using P4 and how certain functionalities open doors for many more possibilities in SmartNICs.

”Highly Secure OS Kernel for SmartNIC Applications”

The second presentation will be hosted by our senior software engineer, Paweł Dulęba. He’ll talk about how to improve operating system security for SmartNIC applications.

The issue is that most SmartNICs have simple control structures, even though there are advanced Linux distribution features available. This results in distributions much larger than necessary, and much slower due to unnecessary background activities. These slow, unused features may contain security gaps. Paweł will show how to avoid them by using a faster kernel with a focus on security. He’ll present an example of the seL4 kernel, developed with a community foundation to deal specifically with those issues.

“Writing Universal DPDK Drivers for SmartNICs”

In our next talk our senior software engineer, Jan Zieleźnicki will present how you can achieve a standardized way to handle the advanced functionalities of SmartNICs with DPDK drivers.

DPDK has now introduced a tunnel offloading API that defines capabilities in a generic manner, accommodating a vast array of software and hardware. We reveal the latest version of OvS, the software switching solution, integrating the experimental API. This breakthrough offers an effortless path to implementing offloading in numerous common scenarios.

Jan will showcase a proof of concept of DPDK drivers, specially crafted for two different P4-capable SmartNICs. Thanks to the API, these drivers seamlessly interchange without any modifications to the OvS software, thus achieving plug-and-play offloading.

Sounds interesting? Join us during the summit! We can’t wait to see you there. Our team will have a booth where we’ll welcome anyone interested in the future of the SmartNICs to discuss the obstacles and opportunities of this technology.

Won’t be able to participate in the SmartNICs Summit 2023 but you are interested in the topics of our talks? Check out our blog and YouTube channel      , where we share more of our SmartNICs expertise.

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