Comment by bcantrill

Comment by bcantrill 2 days ago

We've talked about it a bunch, most recently when talking about Intel after Gelsinger.[0] I went into more detail on Intel's total mishandling of Tofino in my blog entry describing why Gelsinger was the wrong choice to lead Intel in 2021.[1]

As you might imagine, this move from Intel is something that we at Oxide have advocated for strenuously -- and it is a tremendous tribute to the former Tofino team at Intel that this got done. As I hope I made clear in my blog entry: the folks working on Tofino at Intel have been great to work with; they deserved much better than their (former) executive leadership.

[0] https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/intel-after...

[1] https://bcantrill.dtrace.org/2024/12/08/why-gelsinger-was-wr...

danpalmer 2 days ago

Thanks for the context, your respect for the Tofino team certainly came through in the podcast.

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dfex 2 days ago

Thanks Brian [0] was a great podcast and got me through a large lawn mowing!

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mikeyhew 2 days ago

Does this move to open source P4 have any impact on Oxide at all, or is it too little too late?

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bcantrill a day ago

We definitely advocated for it (at all stages of our interaction with Tofino -- but especially strenuously after the part was killed), and it does have impact on us in that it was one of the few parts of our stack that we couldn't open (and now we can -- stay tuned there). We remain big believers in P4 and want to see P4 compilers for other switching silicon, so getting an open is a big step in that direction. I would also say that what Intel did here beat our expectations, and includes many aspects of their software that we didn't think they would make available. So even though we will be moving beyond Tofino, getting their software open source is great and we're very supportive -- and if anything, it just sharpens for us what a poor strategic decision it was to kill Tofino.

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