Comment by eqvinox
2 days ago
> This bold move from Intel to open-source the Tofino P4 software is more than just a licensing decision; it’s a call to action for the global developer community.
Nah. 5 years ago this would've been bold. Now it's ridding yourself of the baggage of an almost-dead platform that you're about to make fully dead.
Still appreciate getting the tooling as FOSS rather than just terminating it, but let's not go for delusions here.
What are they making instead?
To my knowledge: nothing. Intel is exiting the network switch silicon business¹. Broadcom and nVidia are dominating (different parts of) the market; Marvell and Microchip are fighting for the scraps.
The only "cool" player is Microchip, who have been providing full datasheets, register maps, and open sourcing their drivers for years now. But I'm under no illusions they're doing this out of the goodness of their heart, they're doing it because it's one of very few competetive advantages available to them.
(Which is perfectly fine! FOSS drivers are a great competetive advantage! It's not working super well sadly :/ — but part of the problem here is Broadcom's anticompetetive behavior. To my knowledge, any switch OEM producing Broadcom-based gear will get their NDAs and silicon access revoked if they so much as dream about making devices with non-Broadcom silicon.)
¹ Intel has already exited this business some while ago, they only bought Fulcrum Micro to get better NICs basically since every NIC is nowadays also a switch. Tofino was always a "special beast", not quite competing against e.g. Qumran or Trio. Tofino is (was?) better thought of as special purpose FPGA…
> To my knowledge, any switch OEM producing Broadcom-based gear will get their NDAs and silicon access revoked if they so much as dream about making devices with non-Broadcom silicon.
Cisco Meraki did; their low end switches are Marvell and their "high end" switches (MS420, MS425, MS450, MS350, MS355) were all Broadcom based. Were because about a year ago they announced the End of Sale of all Broadcom based switches.
Everything above the low end stuff is now Cisco Catalyst. (Although one can argue everything from Meraki is low end apart from their prices)
> Marvell and Microchip are fighting for the scraps
Realtek also. Lots of smaller L2 managed switches based on the RTL93xx series. [1]
But I am not seriously comparing Realtek to Tofino, that's like comparing Hot wheels to the actual car.
[1] https://svanheule.net/switches/
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AMD ended up entering the market to some extent - big powerful software-modifiable NIC chips that can also serve as switches from my understanding.
But like Tofino, it's mostly stuff that is "behind the curtain"at hyperscalers or deep inside closed box switches
> To my knowledge, any switch OEM producing Broadcom-based gear will get their NDAs and silicon access revoked if they so much as dream about making devices with non-Broadcom silicon.
Nokia use Broadcom silicon for low-end, in-house for the rest.
Hopefully they don't axe their NICs. At least Intel provides really good open datasheets for their e800 cards, can't say the same about other vendors.
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