Tatsuya Yabe
40 lines
1.9 KiB
Plaintext
40 lines
1.9 KiB
Plaintext
Hardware Table Support -*- text -*-
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----------------------
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The OpenFlow reference implementation in this distribution provides a
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mechanism to support hardware that can accelerate OpenFlow switching.
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The mechanism consists of the ability to add a "hardware acceleration"
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switching table ahead of the software switching tables implemented by
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the reference implementation. The hardware switching table is
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expected to handle any incoming packets that it can on its own. Any
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packets that it cannot handle itself it may pass up to the software
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table implementations.
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Hardware table implementation are provided as a library and built
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in the userspace datapath executable.
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Creating a hardware table module is straightforward. Create a
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directory in the openflow source tree named hw-lib/NAME,
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where NAME identifies the hardware that the module supports. Populate
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that directory with the C source files that comprise the module, plus
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a file named automake.mk that specifies how to build the module in
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the hw-lib directory. This distribution includes a "skeleton" hardware
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library that demonstrates how this works.
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When you perform 'configure', specify each NAME that identifies a
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library to be included on the OpenFlow configure script command as
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the argument to --enable-hw-lib, e.g.:
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./configure --enable-hw-lib=NAME
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Each hardware table library's code is encapsulated in a directory, so
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it is easy to separate a hardware table implementation from OpenFlow.
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Simply package up the contents of the hw-lib/NAME directory and
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distribute it for builders to extract into their distribution
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directory.
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Included in this distribution is a dummy hardware table to aid in beginning
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your own hardware table port, it is located in the hw-lib/skeleton
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folder. Also included is a fully functional NetFPGA hardware table that can run
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as a 1Gbx4 port line-rate OpenFlow switch. Information and instructions for its
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use can be found in the hw-lib/nf2/README file.
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