Utilizing Hybrid P4 Solutions to Enhance 5G gNB with Data Plane Programmability

The traditional method of data plane programming involves deploying a single P4 program to a single target. However, different targets have varying capabilities, functionalities, and support for various programming languages beyond P4. Therefore, disaggregating a single data plane program into multiple subprograms that run on different targets can allow us to leverage the strengths of each target, which becomes particularly important in the context of 5G, where some data plane processing functions, such as buffering and retransmission for RLC processing, cannot be effectively expressed in P4. This paper delves into the decomposition of a 5G gNB across a P4-programmable SmartNIC and an x86 server using DPDK-based processing, thus harnessing the strengths of each target. Our evaluation revealed that offloading certain processing to an x86 server can improve throughput by up to 50%, thanks to the scalability of DPDK applications’ performance with the number of CPU cores. However, offloading does introduce a slight increase in latency, so the approach should be adjusted based on the specific needs and available resources.