We are newcomers to the P4 field. We have a P4 switch with a Tofino1 chip, Debian 11. When deploying the environment according to the vendor’s guide manual, the official document mentions these components and dependent installation packages, but we have been unable to find the SDE installation package referred to here. Could anyone give us some guidance on what needs to be done to configure a P4 switch from scratch? And where can we find the missing packages?
The portion of Tofino software that was released as open source is in this repository: GitHub - p4lang/open-p4studio
I believe it does NOT contain BSP software, though.
In Oct 2025 Intel announced that they would satisfy requests for the proprietary parts of the software for running Tofino hardware boards until Jan 1, 2026, but not afterwards [1]. I have not confirmed whether those plans have changed, but suspect they have not, as it has been almost 2 years since Intel stopped selling Tofino ASICs.
[1] Intel(r) Tofino(tm) Family, TNA, and P4Studio questions Note: Read all replies in that thread.
Thank you for your reply. So going forward, I only need to deploy it as required in this open-p4studio project, right? There is no need for the vendor to provide a software execution environment (i.e., the SDE/KDRV mentioned in the figure), is there?
Warning: If you do not have a BSP software package specifically for your board, I believe no BSP (Board Support Package) is included in the repository GitHub - p4lang/open-p4studio
See the README for that repository to see what it includes, and what it does not include. One minor addition that should be added is that it also seems to include some small binary-only libraries for x86_64 processors that contains some drivers for things like the serdes interfaces.
Thank you very much for your help. I will explore and learn from the P4Studio repository.
Hi there!
From the screenshot you provided, it seems that you have an Asterfusion switch, since those need the I2CDRV and cgos dependencies.
Their BSP is open-source available here: GitHub - asterfusion/bf-bsp-lts: BSP for X-T Programmable Bare Metal Switches
You still need to get the SDE from Intel under NDA though.
I summarized the required steps here: P4TG/docs/asterfusion.md at nightly · uni-tue-kn/P4TG · GitHub , since I had the same issues recently. We are using Ubuntu on our Tofino switches, I am not sure if the Intel SDE compiles on Debian.
Hope this helps!
Fabian
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Thanks a lot for the info, it’s really helpful. I’ve managed to get the BSP, but I’m still wrapping my head around the SDE. The folks at Asterfusion mentioned that their custom OS already has the SDE pre-installed, so no additional download is needed. I’m currently digging into the existing system to see how it works. Thanks again for the links you shared!