Comment by dfex

3 days ago

Am I mistaken or has Intel pretty much shelved the Tofino switching hardware that supports P4 in the first place?

I seem to recall Oxide having to switch suppliers over this?

28 comments

dfex

Reply
wmf  3 days ago

Yes, Intel canceled Tofino two years ago.

I'm not complaining but it's weird that they're open sourcing the SDK now. Maybe it's to support Mount Evans.

  • dolmen  2 days ago

    Releasing dead software that is used only to support dead hardware?

    • spookie  2 days ago

      At least you can still make use of that hardware, many companies should take note of this. You can make hardware and software that doesn't die once someone pulls the plug on the other side.

      Still, of course it would've been better to have released it sooner.

    • snizovtsev  2 days ago

      I think half of Tofino's complexity was in their compiler. So it may inspire new hardware vendors to reuse it in some contexts.

ggm  3 days ago

I also was told tofino was looking EOL. Like NUC, dropped from some C suites KPI set and longterm roadmap.

I'd love to be wrong, this is just what people said.

  • bayindirh  2 days ago

    However, NUC form factor is more lively than ever before. Maybe someone can grab the language and run for something? Miktrotik guys come into my mind.

    • luckman212  5 hours ago

      What's the best "NUC-like" product on the market now? I know ASUS has their lineup of "NUC" that was spun off from Intel. I have used MSI's "Cubi" which was a pretty nice kit. And I know everyone drools over Minisforum stuff (which is expensive but very nicely designed). Any other notable ones?

  • happycube  2 days ago

    NUC somewhat avoided the google^Wintel graveyard - they sold at least the branding to Asus.

    • p_l  2 days ago

      NUCs are shifting completely to ASUS who is going to continue working on them and there are some long term commitments (there are industrial variants for example)

dvtkrlbs  3 days ago

They didnt switch supplier iirc they are still using Tofino since it is is still a capable hardware and they see it being useful for years to come

  • danpalmer  3 days ago

    They spoke on their podcast (I think it was there?) about ditching Tofino for the next generation of the Oxide computer. So it sounds like the current model will always ship with Tofino, but due to no future product development they won't use it again in a new machine. It sounded like they had just secured a replacement for the future but I can't remember who it was.

mmmBacon  2 days ago

P4 has more or less gone nowhere. Tofino was a full generation behind and didn’t make sense. P4 was compelling because people thought they’d solve the Elephant flow problem with traffic engineering in P4 but the resources to actually do this at scale never materialized for many reasons.

  • yusyusyus  2 days ago

    ehh scream SDN 5 times. kinda miss the 2010’s now.

    cisco silicon one uses p4 fwiw. internal development though, but the language makes sense for what the things are.