ACM SIGCOMM 2021 HACKATHON: P4 on Raspberry PI (P4Pi)

Hackathon Program

P4PI is a new low cost, open source hardware platform intended for teaching and research purposes. P4PI enables designing and deploying P4-based network devices using the Raspberry Pi platform and is based on the T4P4S compiler. By setting a target price tag of less than an academic book (under $100), P4PI aims to enable a large number of academic institutes to provide hands-on experience in networking education. Furthermore, as P4PI is based on the popular Raspberry PI platform, it appeals to other hobbyists and does not depend on a single-source provider.

P4PI is developed as part of the P4 Education Workgroup activities. The team aims to provide both educators and practitioners the knowledge and tools required to use P4PI in class and at home, including tutorials, sample code, tools and community support.

The hackathon has an associated Slack channel for discussions. Click on the link below to visit it. If you're asked to sign in, use the workspace name "p4pi.slack.com" to sign up or sign in.

Go to P4Pi Hackathon Slack channel
Go to P4Pi Hackathon wiki page

Call For Participation

This hackathon aims to bring together members of the networking community for the following goals:

Introduce P4PI to networking educators, enable them to get started with the platform and practice its use in lab-like environment.

Develop more teaching and supporting materials for the P4PI ecosystem.

Enable researchers from all levels of expertise to develop P4PI-based concepts and early-stage projects, and to stimulate collaborations between new users.

The hackathon will build upon the virtual nature of the event to allow both P4 experts and newcomers to take part in the hands-on experience. Tutorial materials will be available online, and participants will be working in teams to achieve different goals.

Outline

Participants will be able to join one of the following types of hackathon groups:

Educators - participants who aim to use P4PI in their classroom and that will use the hackathon to practice using the platform and develop additional contents.

Contributors - participants with previous knowledge in P4 who want to port their code to P4PI or to develop better tools, more applications or other target specific projects.

Hackers - participants with expert knowledge in P4 who wish to use the platform for research and development purposes, explore new use cases and come up with cool ideas.

For the Educators and Contributors groups, a "group leader" will lead the group, assist with the project development and provide support if needed.

Audience Expectations and Prerequisites

Attendees will need to use a computer (laptop, desktop or server) as part of the tutorial.
It is highly recommended to use a webcam and a microphone, in order to collaborate with other participants.
A Raspberry Pi 4 model B is highly recommended. Thanks to a grant from the Network Programming Initiative, we will be able to provide platforms to a few dozens of participants, limited by registration time and potential export bans (The deadline for requesting a Raspberry Pi platform has passed. If you have registered and requested a platform prior to August 5, 2021, then the device should arrive at your address in the next two weeks.). However, it is not mandatory to use have a Raspberry Pi in order to take part in the hackathon.

A virtual machine image with all the necessary development tools and a pre-configured P4PI image (Raspbian OS with T4P4S and other utilities) will be provided to the participants. These will allow an easy use of the Raspberry Pi Imager and easy P4PI installation.

Previous knowledge of P4 is recommended but not mandatory. A P4 tutorials will be provided as part of the online materials, as well a P4PI tutorial.

Organizers

• Sándor Laki

  Eötvös Loránd University

  • Bio: Sándor Laki is an Assistant Professor at Eötvös Loránd University (Budapest, Hungary) where he leads the Communication Networks Laboratory. He and his team are key contributors in the development of T4P4S, an open-source P4-compiler and software switch framework with the support of multiple backends (e.g., DPDK, ODP). He holds a PhD Degree in Computer Science from Eotvos Lorand University.

• Robert Soulé

  Yale University

  • Bio: Robert Soulé is an Assistant Professor at Yale University and a Research Scientist at Barefoot Networks, an Intel Company. Soulé co-chairs the P4 Education workgroup and is a member of the P4 Technical Steering Team. He holds a PhD Degree in Computer Science from New York University and did postdoctoral work at Cornell University.

• Noa Zilberman

  University of Oxford

  • Bio: Noa Zilbermanis an Associate Professor at the University of Oxford. Prior to joining Oxford, she was a Fellow and an Affiliated Lecturer at the University of Cambridge. Zilberman co-chairs the P4 Education workgroup, and was the Chief Architect of NetFPGA SUME and NetFPGA Plus. Before joining Cambridge, she was an Engineering Manager and a Chip Architect at Broadcom. She holds a PhD Degree in Electrical Engineering from Tel Aviv University.