Barefoot Networks and Xilinx to Showcase Unprecedented Programmability and Visibility for 5G Networks

BARCELONA, Spain -- Feb. 22, 2018 -- MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS - Barefoot Networks, the creator of Tofino, the world’s fastest P4-programmable 6.5Tb/s Ethernet switch ASIC, and Deep Insight, the world’s first network monitoring system that lets you see what every packet is doing in your network, and Xilinx Inc. (NASDAQ:XLNX), the market leader of programmable semiconductor solutions, will demonstrate an end-to-end network performance monitoring solution that gives network operators per-packet visibility at nanosecond granularity.

As the race to 5G deployments picks up the pace, having a network infrastructure that enables delivery of next-gen services and applications at high-performance and full visibility is critical to business success. 5G enables a rich set of applications in multiple markets including automotive, communications, defense, healthcare, industrial production and media. These new services are enabled by features including lower latency, higher bandwidth, increased capacity for end-devices and the ability to slice the network for different applications. Monitoring the performance of the network for parameters such as latency, bandwidth and quality of service (QoS) will be crucial for provisioning and maintaining services to customers.

“P4-programmability is enabling new paradigms like ‘Computational Networking’ where the network acts as an accelerator for compute. Barefoot Tofino ASIC-based P4 switches with INT, combined with Xilinx® FPGA-based P4 SmartNICs with INT, give 5G network operators the per-packet visibility and the ability to define innovative features in the network to augment compute resources and accelerate VNF performance,” said Ed Doe, VP of Product, Business and Strategy at Barefoot Networks. “Barefoot Deep Insight enables them to visualize, analyze, detect, root cause and mitigate any failures or issues that cause degradation in performance in real-time, helping maintain customer SLAs in the transition to NFV based infrastructure.”

“Xilinx is excited to partner with Barefoot Networks to demonstrate the power of P4-programmability when applied not only to switches in the network, but also to SmartNICs in the servers. Network Function Virtualization (NFV) within 5G networks requires processing of 100G/200G packets at line-rate to provide services like vOLT and vBNG. To achieve these features, devices need to be capable of L2/L3 processing, stream classification, stream buffering, OvS, TCP/IP, and VXLAN/NVGRE offload at the 100/200G packet rates,” said Farhad Shafai, Vice President, Communications Markets at Xilinx. “The ability to implement these capabilities on a Xilinx FPGA-based, P4-programmable SmartNIC enhances the performance of the network while having the visibility provided by Barefoot Deep Insight analytics, which network operators can use to pinpoint problems to the exact hop in the entire path a packet takes in the network.”

Barefoot Tofino is the world's first end-user programmable series of Ethernet switch ASICs. The switch leverages P4 to let customers define forwarding plane functionality in minutes, providing both programmability and performance for a wide array of use cases. Generally available since 2017, Tofino is used by customers in a variety of market segments, including hyperscale data centers, enterprise, and service provider to leverage programmability to meet rapidly growing network functionality and performance requirements.

Barefoot Deep Insight is the world’s first network monitoring system to provide full visibility into every packet in a network. Deep Insight detects almost any anomaly in the network, including microbursts, congestion problems and load balancing issues. This allows customers to uncover the four ground truths for every packet in their network: 1) How did it get here? 2) Why is it here? 3) How long was it delayed? and 4) Why was it delayed? Deep Insight is available now to key customers and partners.

Available with Xilinx’s latest UltraScale+™16nm FPGA device, SmartNICs can be programmed using the industry’s first P4 compiler for FPGAs and also support features like partial reconfiguration, which allows users to program custom acceleration IPs and packet processing functionality; Multi-rate network (10/25/40/50/100G) interfaces with up to 100Gbps host interface using PCIe Gen3x16; and software drivers for configuration and interface to host applications.

The joint demonstration showcasing end-to-end visibility in a Virtual Network Function Service Chain will take place on Feb. 26 – March 1 at Mobile World Congress at the Xilinx Meeting Room in Hall 5, booth 5L14MR.

About Barefoot Networks
Barefoot Networks launched in 2016 after two years of developing technology that built switch silicon with a forwarding plane that is defined in software while not compromising on performance. Barefoot empowers network owners and their infrastructure partners to design, optimize, and innovate to meet their specific requirements and gain competitive advantage. In combining the P4 programming language with fast programmable switches, Barefoot has also created an ecosystem for compilers, tools, and P4 programs to make P4 accessible to anybody. Barefoot Networks is headquartered in Silicon Valley and is backed by Google Inc., Goldman Sachs Principal Strategic Investments, Alibaba, Tencent, and by premier venture capital firms Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Andreessen Horowitz. For more information, visit https://barefootnetworks.com/.

About Xilinx
Xilinx is a leading provider of All Programmable semiconductor products, including FPGAs, SoCs, MPSoCs, RFSoCs, and 3D ICs. Xilinx uniquely enables applications that are both software defined and hardware optimized – powering industry advancements in Cloud Computing, 5G Wireless, Embedded Vision, and Industrial IoT. For more information, visit http://www.xilinx.com.