Technology
Intel® Tofino™ Expandable Architecture Paves Way for Advanced Use Case, Multi-Terabit Switches and Routers
Ed Doe, VP Switch & Fabric Group, Intel & Mike Fitton, VP Programmable Solutions Group, Intel
The current wave of digitization trends driven by data explosion and new services creates an urgent need for cloud service providers (CSPs), communications service providers (CoSPs), and even enterprises to transform their networks to handle more traffic, scale easily, and support new networking functions. A key problem facing service providers today is meeting massive, multi-terabit bandwidth demands while also keeping total cost of ownership (TCO) to a minimum. Existing network functions are often proprietary and fixed function — making them difficult to upgrade, carrying long service times, and loaded with high capital expenditure (CapEx) or operational expenditure (OpEx) costs.
For switching and routing, optimized silicon has been built to drive efficiency (power per bit, cost per bit), but for the networking functions such as different types of gateways, load balancers, or security functions, it has not been possible to leverage these optimizations as the standard switching silicon lacks the programmability and memory capacity. The Intel® Tofino™ Expandable Architecture addresses these challenges by allowing service providers to build highly optimized networking functions to meet the demands of today’s networks.
The new Intel Tofino Expandable Architecture greatly enlarges the capabilities of Intel® Tofino™ Intelligent Fabric Processors (Intel® Tofino™ IFPs) by enabling Intel® Xeon® CPUs and hardware accelerators — such as Intel® FPGAs and Intel® Infrastructure Processing Units (Intel® IPUs) — to increase switch and router table and buffer capacity by two orders of magnitude when compared to stand-alone data center-focused switch ASICs. The new architecture also enables the addition of new network implementations to the Intel Tofino IFP’s repertoire. The net result of combining the capabilities of Intel Tofino IFPs, Intel Xeon CPUs, and Intel FPGAs or IPUs delivers massive network switching performance with the scale, flexibility, conformance to open standards, and reduced TCO that will be required in the Data Center of the Future.
Intel Tofino IFPs are based on P4-programmability and provide performance up to 25.6 Tbps. These IFPs optimize power consumption for hyperscale use cases and accelerate machine learning (ML) for distributed workloads. They also support real-time in-band network telemetry (INT), DDoS mitigation, and Layer 4 load balancing, spanning the Edge-to-Cloud spectrum. Some specific networking use cases can have massive data requirements that extend beyond on-chip switch resources. To address these massive data use cases, the Intel Tofino Expandable Architecture accommodates hundreds of millions of table entries and packet buffers with capacities as large as tens of gigabytes, enabling network owners and operators to reach their scalability and adaptability goals.
Use cases for Intel Tofino Expandable Architecture include:
- Cloud networking functions such as L4 load balancing, firewalls, tunnel termination and translation, and network address translation (NAT)
- Telco networking functions such as carrier-grade NAT (CG-NAT), high-end routing, network packet brokering, and various additional user-plane functions
- Telco gateway functions such as Broadband Network Gateway (BNG) and the Access Gateway Function (AGF), which require extra-large buffers for advanced hierarchical traffic shaping, scheduling, and policing for fixed network and 5G residential gateways
Early access customers including Baidu are already using Intel Tofino Expandable Architecture to transform and modernize their next-generation networking equipment designs.
- Baidu, one of the world’s largest cloud services providers, perpetually evolves and improves its intelligent cloud to keep pace with an exploding number of cloud-based applications, including high-performance computing (HPC), artificial intelligence (AI), ML, data analytics, and other specialized big data tasks. As part of this evolution, Baidu is adding network gateways based on the Intel Tofino Expanded Architecture to its Universal Network Platform (UNP), which is a cloud gateway. Baidu developed this platform to handle the terabit-level network traffic flows generated by new and existing cloud workloads such as autonomous driving, vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications, Internet of Things (IoT) networking, e-commerce, online video streaming, and online games.
The Intel Tofino Expandable Architecture provides network owners and operators with the flexibility that they need to customize their networks for a variety of present and future workloads and enables the addition of supporting network functions that deliver capabilities that greatly exceed those of traditional network switching. The Intel Tofino Expandable Architecture offers four key benefits:
- Massive performance and scale
- Flexibility
- Conformance to open standards
- Reduced Total Cost of Ownership
There are currently multiple ways to develop networking solutions using the Intel Tofino Expandable Architecture.
The Intel Tofino Expandable Architecture represents yet another example of Intel’s ability to forge members of its broad silicon and software portfolio in creative ways that solve complex customer challenges. Contact Intel today to find out how the Intel Tofino Expandable Architecture and other Intel solutions can help your networks and data centers meet tomorrow’s challenges.
Visit the Intel Intelligent Fabric web page for more information about Intel Tofino IFPs and the new Intel Tofino Expandable Architecture. The web page also includes technical details and two white papers titled “Let Your Networks Soar with Intel Tofino Expandable Architecture” and “Baidu Intelligent Cloud Leverages Intel Tofino Expandable Architecture to Meet 10T-Level Bandwidth Requirements.”
Notices & Disclaimers:
Sources are in: Let Your Networks Soar with Intel Tofino Expandable Architecture” and “Baidu Intelligent Cloud Leverages Intel Tofino Expandable Architecture to Meet 10T-Level Bandwidth Requirements
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