CLIENT PROFILE
A leading, US-based semiconductor company, pursuing a new market share of white box clients.
BUSINESS NEED
- The Client aspired to grow their business in the white-box market. To strengthen the Client’s position, their switch silicon product needed to be complemented with specific open-source software.
- SwitchDev driver’s availability from the ASIC vendor enables end users to deploy their choice of a supporting Linux-based OS on their networking platform. As a result, they can eliminate the vendor lock-in of proprietary systems. This change enables cost-e ciency throughout the supply chain while making the product applicable and a ordable for a wide range of industries–ranging from ROBO, SMB, and SOHO, up to enterprise data centers.
- The implemented SwitchDev driver for the Client’s switch silicon family supports Dent OS, targeted at Enterprise Edge use cases, on white-box platforms.
- Being a hardware product business, the Client needed to scale their software development capabilities by engaging a service partner with expertise in networking, Linux kernel, drivers and applications. The SwitchDev driver for the Client’s ASIC was to be contributed to Linux Kernel, so experience with open source was crucial for the vendor.
- Expertise in Linux kernel and networking is scarce on the market. PLVision is a well-positioned company capable of providing the necessary software development services. The company also embodies solid experience in working with and contributing to open-source communities.
Figure 1. Generic SwitchDev driver structure
TECHNICAL HIGHLIGHTS
- SwitchDev, the Ethernet switch device driver model, is an in-kernel driver model for switch devices which ooads the forwarding data plane from the kernel to hardware. With the SwitchDev driver being available from the ASIC vendor, end users can deploy their choice of an unmodified Linux distribution as a NOS on their networking hardware, as well as use native Linux tools.
- The project included software design and development of the SwitchDev driver, implementation of the SwitchDev interface, and testing with further upstreaming of the driver.
- The SwitchDev driver was enabled for the Client’s chip family, covering several switch silicons for Enterprise Edge.
- The developed functionality was upstreamed, according to the standard community procedure, with further
inclusion into the Linux kernel product. This required alignment with the Netdev community and processing the related feedback. - The project also covered design, development, implementation and testing of the firmware part, an essential component of the solution. The developed firmware was published in the Linux firmware repository.
- As a certain required functionality was lacking within Linux, the additional configuration was enabled. PLVison’s team extended the generic kernel infrastructure, allowing to ooad more of the kernel network functionality. PLVision’s team has been working with the Linux community to e ciently close the gaps.
- The ongoing stage of the project includes the development of additional features and adjustment to the changing Linux infrastructure.
BUSINESS RESULTS
As deliverables, the Client obtained an additional open-source interface and software package for their switch silicons. This allowed their partners to avoid the vendor-lock of proprietary NOSes, increasing the Client’s white box market.
PLVision delivered a successful project by leveraging its strong, low-level networking and embedded software development background, which was powered by previous experience with 6 top switch silicons. The company’s past collaboration with open-source communities was also a benefit in securing the success of the upstreaming process.
Contact Us to Discuss Your Use Case!
Get in touch to scale your switch platform with expert SwitchDev driver development and open‑source contributions