NeTS: Medium: Collaborative Research: Language and Hardware Primitives for Programming the Data Plane in High-Speed Networks

网络路由器和交换机的发展主要由性能驱动。最近，部分由于大型数据中心网络的出现，对网络操作的更好控制的需求以及对新功能的需求，路由器的可编程性已经变得与性能一样重要。作为回应，研究人员和实践者已经开发出具有RISC启发的流水线架构的可重配置交换芯片，其通过硬件原语提供一些可编程性，这些硬件原语可以被配置到具有软件指令的处理流水线中。可重配置交换机的性能与固定功能芯片组相同，但面积开销更低，因此越来越受到关注。本项目旨在通过开发可重配置交换机的高级编程抽象和流量管理算法来扩展最新技术。本计画将研究：1）一个类C语言与一个代表现代交换机的抽象机器，2）一个将交易规格转换为管线抽象机器的编译器，3）一个用于可程式化封包排程的Push-In，First-Out（PIFO）原语。研究结果将被纳入本科和研究生课程，为学生提供一个机会，实现网络协议在C语言，一个熟悉的语言，但运行它们在硬件速度。课程材料将通过MIT OpenCourseWare和MITx MOOC广泛提供。

The evolution of network routers and switches has been driven primarily by performance. Recently, thanks in part to the emergence of large datacenter networks, the need for better control over network operations, and the desire for new features, programmability of routers has become as important as performance. In response, researchers and practitioners have developed reconfigurable switching chips with a RISC-inspired pipeline architecture, which provide some programmability through hardware primitives that can be configured into a processing pipeline with software directives. Reconfigurable switches are gaining traction as they perform the same as fixed-function chipsets but with lower area overhead.This project seeks to extend the state-of-the-art by developing higher-level programming abstractions and traffic management algorithms for reconfigurable switches. This project will investigate:1) a C-like language and an abstract machine representing modern switches,2) a compiler to convert the transactional specification to the pipelined abstract machine, and a3) Push-In, First-Out (PIFO) primitive for programmable packet scheduling.This project will make programming high-speed switches easier and more expressive, which will be useful in datacenters, enterprises, and service provider networks. Research findings will be incorporated into the undergraduate and graduate curricula, offering students an opportunity to implement network protocols in C, a familiar language, but run them at hardware speeds. The course material will be made widely available through MIT OpenCourseWare and on the MITx MOOC.