How to use p4-ovs on my dpu?

Getting Started with P4
1

Hello everyone,
Recently, I have some questions about p4-ovs to ask.
First, my DPU has an independent ubuntu 20.04. I want to create an OVS environment and deploy P4 programs in OVS. How do I apply p4 to OVS? Is p4 runtime used? In addition, my host also has an independent ubuntu 20.04. How do I connect the OVS of the DPU to the virtual machine created in the host?
If someone answers, I would be grateful! :heart_eyes:

2

Hi Livin,

Within the IPDK project https://ipdk.io/ a P4-OVS switch is under developing GitHub - ipdk-io/ovs: Open vSwitch. They are put a lot of effort on the deployment but till now i suppose that it has not been tested on a DPU. Here the YT channel where meetings and seminaries are uploaded https://www.youtube.com/@ipdk9195/videos.

Best
Davide

3

Hi Davide，

Thank you very much for your answer. Is there any possibility that vswitch can support p4 deployment on DPU? Of course, this is just a guess, have you ever seen such projects？

Best
Livin

4

Hi Livin,

one of the target for that project is DPU/Smart-NIC, but till now I didn’t see any demo/POC. Overall P4 on DPU is an hot topic but I didn’t find any production ready tools/deployment on Smart-NIC . Morover the P4 model dedicatet to DPU/Smart-NIC, pna model, is still WIP, but ad the end of the year/beginning the new spec will be release. So, probably the P4 model used by your DPU is proprietary, while IPDK suppot only psa model and in the future pna model.

5

Hi Davide,

Thank you for your help. Wish you a happy life!