Your Imagination, Our Innovation
Data and Control Plane Interconnect
solutions for SDN & NFV Networks
Raghu Kondapalli
August 2014
Title & Abstract
Your Imagination, Our Innovation
Title: Data & Control Plane Interconnect for SDN & NFV networks
Abstract:
Software defined and functionally disaggregated network elements rely heavily
on deterministic and secure data & control plane communication within and
across the network elements. In these environments scalability, reliability and
performance of the whole network relies heavily on the deterministic behavior
of this interconnect. In this presentation, Raghu Kondapalli will discuss various
aspects of this data & control plane interconnect including its functional
requirements and solution components suitable for SDN/NFV environments
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Agenda
Your Imagination, Our Innovation
•  State of current network solutions and emerging trends
•  Challenges with existing interconnect solutions mapped to SDN
& NFV networks
•  Solution proposals for data and control plane interconnect
•  Conclusions
Page 3
Chief Officer’s views
“Why does interconnecting my
servers and storage takes more
than 30% of my budget?
Your Imagination, Our Innovation
“I want dynamic cloud scale
orchestration for my network
elements”
“I want my network to adapt to my
business needs not the other way around”
“I want to transition from purpose built
network elements to scalable multipurpose blades”
Increasing Network agility and lowering costs are driving disruptions in the industry
Page 4
Network Architect’s view
Building
practices
Base Station
Page 5
Your Imagination, Our Innovation
Deployment
practices
New service
rollout
practices
Router
Appliance
Operational
practices
Switch
disaggregate
virtualize
interconnect
automate
Network Layers
(L1, L2, L3+ etc.)
into functions
network
functions onto
multi-purpose
elements
functions into
complete
network
elements
orchestration &
management of
network
elements
Solution Centric view
Your Imagination, Our Innovation
Type 1
Type 2
x86 Compute
Define
Multi - use
server
Network
Offload SoC
ARM SoC
ARM SoC
Interconnect
Type 3
Data Plane
Offload Card
ARM SoC
ARM SoC
x86 Server
Control Plane
Offload Card
Vertically aggregated
Horizontally dis-aggregated
Define build
architecture
Cloud Mgmt /
OSS / EMS
Define
Orchestration
& Management
Resource
Mgmt
SDN
Controller
Hypervisor
/ OS
Page 6
SDN Deployment Challenges
Your Imagination, Our Innovation
Resource Orchestration Overlay
After SDN
deployment
Before SDN
deployment
Virtual Network Overlay
Controllers
Management
Physical Network Topology
1
Functional pooling increases node-to-node
traffic
3
Significant Control Plane Complexities due to
latencies & new traffic types
2
Coordination between multiple controllers &
resource orchestration
4
Scale poses many challenges in state
management and traffic engineering
Functional Coordination and Control Plane Acceleration are key to SDN Deployments
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NFV/SDN Backbone Components view
Your Imagination, Our Innovation
Resource Orchestration Overlay Network
Across network
elements
SF
SF
SF
NFV/SDN
Distributor
SF
SF
SF
SF: Software Function
HF: Hardware Function
SF
Within a network
element
Deterministic interconnect
NFVSDN
Coordinator
NFV/SDN
Coordinator
HF
Note: Colors indicate
various virtual network
functions
SF
HF
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NFV/SDN
Distributor
SF
NFV/SDN
Coordinator
HF
HF
SF
HF
Disaggregated Architectures
Your Imagination, Our Innovation
Passive Backplane
Network
Element
L4+
L3
L2
L1
L2
L1
L1
L1
Active Switch Fabric
Local Functional Interconnect
•  Switch Fabric Interface
•  RDMA
•  VoQ
•  Traffic manager
•  Load balancer
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Interconnect Types
Your Imagination, Our Innovation
Passive Backplane
SDN
Controller(s)
Active Switch Fabric
Page 10
1
Inter-network function
interconnect
2
Intra-network function
interconnect
3
backplane interconnect
4
Chassis to chassis
interconnect
Interconnect Requirements
latency
Bandwidth
security
Your Imagination, Our Innovation
Data Plane
function
Control Plane
function
Bandwidth
High
Low to Med
Latency sensitivity
High
Med
Low to Med
High
Programmable &
Hierarchical
Programmable
Reliability
Preferably loss less
w re-transmissions
Preferably loss
less w retransmissions
Physical
Ethernet
(IEEE802.3)
Ethernet
(IEEE802.3)
Protocol
Ethernet
Ethernet
Security
Traffic Management
protocol
Reliability
physical
Traffic
management
Varying Data and Control Plane Interconnect requires
Scalability, Programmability and Functional flexibility
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Axxia 5516: Industry Leading Innovation
Your Imagination, Our Innovation
Coherent Memory Interconnect
Cortex Cortex
A15
A15
Cortex Cortex
A15
A15
Cortex Cortex
A15
A15
Cortex Cortex
A15
A15
Cortex Cortex
A15
A15
Cortex Cortex
A15
A15
Cortex Cortex
A15
A15
Cortex Cortex
A15
A15
Shared L2 Cache
Shared L2 Cache
Shared L2 Cache
Shared L2 Cache
First High-End 16 Core ARM Multicore
Communication Processor
First Fully Cache Coherent
ARM CCN-504 Network Interconnect
Network Compute Adapter
Memory Management Engine
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EIOA + PCX
Intelligent Pkt Switch
DPI Engine
Timer Manager
Security Processor
Pkt Integrity Check
Market Leading Acceleration
Engines and Packet Processing
First Integrated Ethernet Switch with 16
10Gb Ethernet links
Sec Sys
SPI/I2C
1588/SynE
USB
sRRIO
Interfaces & Peripherals
DDR3
Controllers
PCIe
Stripe 7
Stripe 6
Stripe 5
Stripe 4
Stripe 3
Stripe 2
Stripe 1
Stripe 0
L3 Cache
1/10G Eth
PIC
Semap.
Engine
PQM
Hash
Engine
State
Engine
PPE PPE PPE PPE
Stream Editor
PPE PPE PPE PPE
Modular
Traffic Manager
Modular Packet Processor
Pkt Assembly Block
Virtual Pipeline Task Ring
Samples Delivered on Schedule
with customer Linux bring-up in 2 days
Axxia SoC for SDN/NFV Backbone
Your Imagination, Our Innovation
Pre-processing
CPU
CPU
CPU
Examples
•  Stateful Classification
CPU
CPU
CPU
Examples
•  Crypto Offload
•  Scheduler/shaping
CPU Adapter
Input/Output
Adapter
Packet Eng
Packet Editor
Input/Output
Adapter
Fast Path Processing
Pkt Assembly
DDR
Pkt Integrity
L3 Cache
DDR
•  Ethernet Switching
•  Protocol Interworking
•  Wireless transport
Deterministic
Bandwidth
Virtu
al
Pipel
ine
Traffic Mgr
Crypto Eng
RegEx Eng
Timer Mgr
Hierarchical Traffic
Management
Scalable
Performance
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One or more of:
•  RegEX Offload
•  Rate shaping
•  Crypto (eg, IPsec / Kasumi)
•  IP de-fragmentation
Examples
Intra-processing
Post-processing
Examples
•  Traffic Management
•  Crypto Offload
•  Scheduler/shaping
•  Checksum/CRC generation
Autonomous pipeline
processing
Programmable
Accelerators
Conclusions
Your Imagination, Our Innovation
•  Software defined and functionally disaggregated network
elements rely heavily on deterministic and secure data & control
plane communication within and across the network elements
•  Intelligent and programmable interconnect plays a crucial role for
data and control plane functions to scale
•  Axxia multi-core SoC w various programmable functional
accelerators offers a scalable data and control plane solution
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