Design And Implementation Of A P4-based Programmable Data Switching Prototype System

The Open Flow-based Software Defined Networking architecture is becoming a hotspot in the SDN research since it enables network owners to realize network programmability.However,the current SDN programmability is only limited in the network control plane,the forwarding protocols and packet forwarding logic that Open Flow switches can support are still mainly determined by fixed-function switching chips.In this context,the proposed P4 language can realize the programmable protocol-independent packet processing(P4),and is quickly becoming a hot topic in the research of programmable data planes.Major manufacturers have launched their own P4 development platform.However,the processor system and programmable switching chip of the existing P4 development platforms are implemented by independently separated devices and peripheral circuits.The large size and high power consumption of the switch device is inconvenient in teaching demonstrations and scientific research.To meet the needs of teaching and scientific research,this thesis therefore presents a prototype system for P4 development that is implemented by the system on chip(SoC)with high integration,high performance and high performance price ratio.The ONet Switch30 development board manufactured by Meshsr company is chosen as the hardware platform for this prototype system.It is based on the highly integrated All-Programmable Zynq-7000 device from Xilinx,and integrates ARM Cortex-A9 dual core processor-based processing system(PS)and Kintex-7 FPGA-based programmable logic(PL).The architecture achieves data transmission between the PS and PL parts through a high-bandwidth and high-efficiency AXI4 interface,realizing the seamless combination of the software programmability of the processor part and the hardware reconfigurability of the FPGA part.The P4 switching prototype system implemented with the ONet Switch30 platform can not only obtain the programmability of the data plane through FPGA development and bring high forwarding performance,but also provide rich and flexible application functions with the ARM processor.This thesis focuses on the design and implementation of a SoC-based P4 programmable data switching prototype system.Firstly,by analyzing and using the reference architecture from Xilinx's Simple Sume Switch designed for Net FPAG SUME boards,a P4-based switching architecture using SoC is proposed.Secondly,the design and implementation of the proposed P4-SoC architecture are performed.System submodules such as Ethernet MAC core,DMA core and AXI Interconnect core are customized with the IP Integrator tools in the Vivado development kit.Two universal modules for the main user_datapath of a switch,the input arbitration module and the output buffer queues module are designed by using the Verilog hardware description language.The P4-SDNet compiler is used to compile P4 source program into HDL source code,and Vivado is used to encapsulate the generated HDL source code into the corresponding IP core.Finally,all the IP core modules developed above are connected according to the P4_SoC architecture,and pins constraints and timing constraints are added to complete the integration of whole hardware system.The embedded development environment based on Linux system is built on ONet Switch30 development board,and P4 test case program is written and loaded into the system to complete the test verification of the basic function of the P4 specification.The test results show that the platform can run the loaded P4 application program and realize different packet processing and forwarding functions according to the different P4 applications developed by the user,that is,a prototype system of the protocol independent switching has been implemented.In addition,without affecting the performance of the P4 application,the utilization ratio of platform software and hardware resources is not more than 50%,which reserves sufficient development resources for the users using this P4 development platform.