[dpdk-dev] [dpdk-techboard] Request to create a repo under DPDK for Network Function Framework for Go

[Stephen Hemminger]

On Thu, 15 Mar 2018 16:15:21 +0000
"Melik-Adamyan, Areg" <areg.melik-adamyan at intel.com> wrote:

> Hello.
> 
> Within Intel, we developed and open-sourced a DPDK based high-level library and runtime named Network Function Framework for Go (NFF-Go: https://github.com/intel-go/nff-go) which is intended to simplify packet processing applications, especially for cloud-native deployment. Based on DPDK NFF-Go provides higher-level packet processing functions in native Go alongside with simple, powerful runtime.
> NFF-Go library itself is not a set of wrappers over 'C' calls to DPDK as that would result in poor performance due to the 300-1500 cycles that can be spent by a context switch. Instead, NFF-Go uses pointers from the DPDK initialization of the device mbuf structures. It permits copying of packet data between Go's safe and DPDK/C unsafe memory. NFF-Go works everywhere where DPDK works.
> *Capabilities:* Library provides functions to create packet processing graph from user-defined or predefined functions. The graph can be arbitrary but will need to have a single entry point. The user can freely use both synchronous and asynchronous programming capabilities provided by Go language. Also, auto-scaling is automatically provided by the built-in scheduler using cores as needed, and freeing them after use. NFF-Go provides an alternative development environment for creating network functions using a smaller number of lines of code compared to DPDK/C without sacrificing performance. These capabilities make it possible to implement run-till-completion packet processing model.  The library includes a component called boundary node, which allows consuming packet data from all types of sources: Ethernet, file, memory buffer, remote procedure call and then applying the packets to the processing graph which will be transparently deployed through any cloud orchestration engine.
> *Benefit* NFF-Go is based on the DPDK and lowers the entry barrier for bringing packet processing to less experienced developers and push towards cloud-native usages. We strongly believe that NFF-Go is complementary to DPDK. Having a closer link between them should help both projects - it will ease pickup from one source/repo the needed set of features to be used, rather than us just providing a disjointed collection of software projects which are hosted in different places.
> 
> We expect the initial commit to include the following:
> 
> -          Low, Asm - low-level C and ASM code for gluing DPDK
> 
> -          Packet - a library that provides an abstraction for packet and tools to manipulate
> 
> -          Flow  - library to provide an abstraction for packet flows
> 
> -          Scheduler - runtime and a scheduler for auto-scaling and integration with RSS
> 
> -          Examples:
> 
> o   Forwarding - simple L3 forwarding
> 
> o   Firewall - an example of simple ACL based firewall
> 
> o   Tutorial - step based tutorial how to use NFF-Go
> 
> o   NAT - an example of production grade Network Address Translation
> 
> o   AntiDDOS - simple example of AntiDDOS on L3
> 
> -          Automation scripts - helping to build, deploy and test applications on a single host
> 
> Thanks,
> Areg Melik-Adamyan
> Engineering Manager
> Developer Products Divison
> Intel Corporation

I am ok with it being on DPDK, but might it make more sense on github or under FD.io?
Or is there some legal and/or political reason not to?