DASH Workgroup Community Update 11/12/2025

[Kristina Moore]

Hello DASH Open Source Community –thank you for your time last Wednesday – we enjoyed a great presentation from DreamBig Semiconductor to present their porting of the P4-based model for SONiC-DASH to a Python-based implementation and integrated it into the CI/CD pipeline 😊.  Thank you to @Farhan Tariq and @Farhan Tariq J and team!

The new model includes the following key features:

• Seamless operation of both data and control planes
• All PTF and pytest test suites passing successfully
• Fully containerized solution that runs end-to-end within the existing setup
• Identical behavior and artifacts to the original BMv2 model

You can view the pull request here: https://github.com/sonic-net/DASH/pull/687 ; it is available for everyone, with documentation and instructions provided.  DreamBig is happy to be a PoC for further questions or feedback. 

 

For brevity’s sake this week, I’ll only list the Completed items in our table further below (as our work items list is quite large).

Also, thanks to @Bud Grise and @Swaminathan Balasubramanian for the SONiC-DASH Linux Foundation mailer list sign-up!  I’m still looking to leverage the Linux Foundation lists more to manage communications.  If you could please take the time to enter your info here, I can initiate deletion of the sonic-dash@googlegroups list we used when we began the project. 

And lastly, we continue to have a 2 contributions up for grabs:

1. We have counters per supplier, however they are not standardized.  If you are interested in working on defining the SAI APIs, please open a PR in the DASH repo under the sonic-dash-hld

2. It would be great to have a volunteer to suggest a PR in the dash-sonic-hld also, for commands to show ENI counters and DPU global metrics   

For Complete Details, please see the “Full DASH Community Notes” near the end of this communication. 

Follow-ups: 

• OCP SAI Repo PR Follow-Up: Share the PR links for the OCP SAI repo in the chat for Kristina to add them to the project and investigate how to move them forward. (Farhan - done)
• OCP SAI Repo Contact Investigation: Look up and attempt to find a contact or process for progressing PRs in the OCP SAI repo and send an email to Farhan with findings. (Kristina - done)
• Sharing PR and Contact Information: Share email and PR link in the chat for team members to reach out regarding the Python model. (Farhan - done https://github.com/sonic-net/DASH/pull/687)
• PR 2175 [DASH] Add flow bulk get session event data struct Pipeline Issue: Replace the branch for PR 2175 to trigger a new pipeline run and resolve the outdated build issue. (@Marian Pritsak build failure)
       Remind Microsoft reviewers (Riff or Prince) to merge PR 2175 after pipeline checks are successful. (Prabhat)
• PR 683 Review Update ENCAP_U1 functionality by u1_* headers emission and u1_ipv4 checksum for adding missing D parser emission in the repository. (@Marian Pritsak to review)
• ACL Test for VNET to VNET: Sync with Prince to determine priority and next steps for enabling or skipping ACL tests for VNET to VNET SmartSwitch scenario. (@Prabhat Aravind)

 

In Summary (full list below), since the last Community call we have:

35 PRs Completed (+20)

11 in To Do (- 2)

9 in Draft (- 2)

40 in Progress (-4)

9 Awaiting Review (-5)

 

Just a reminder that we would encourage/invite Community members to present to the Community (test runs or progress, new scenarios, etc…), just ‘r’ to let me know, or generate a PR in the repo.

The DASH channel link is here to subscribe / access WG content (and click the bell to receive notifications). 

 Thank you for your time/contributions – see you on 11/19/2025

 

Meeting Title:  SONiC-DASH-Workgroup Community Meeting #164

Attendees (14):

DASH Group to join: https://groups.google.com/g/sonic-dash

Linux Foundation list: https://lists.sonicfoundation.dev/g/SONiC-Dash

 

Abdul Rouff - Nvidia	Gagan Punathil Ellath - Nvidia	Philipp Keydel - Synogate
Bud Grise - XSightLabs	Kristina Moore - MSFT	Ramesh Raghupathy - Cisco
Don Ewald - Cisco	Michael Aronovici - Cisco	Swaminathan Balasubramanian - Keysight
Farhan Tariq - DreamBig Semi	Mircea Dan Gheorghe - Keysight	Veerappan, Senthilnathan - AMD
Farhat Ullah - DreamBig Semi	murali Venkateshaiah - Cisco

   

 

 

Full DASH Community Notes 😊

•  Python-Based Model for SONiC DASH Project: Farhat and Farhan from Dream Big Semi, with contributions from Mohamed Faqiunus and Saad Mazhar, presented the new Python-based model for the SONiC DASH project, detailing its motivation, architecture, technical implementation, CI/CD integration, current status, and future plans, and provided a live demonstration of its operation and testing.

• Project Motivation and Contributors: Farhat explained that the Python-based model was introduced to address limitations of the P4 language, such as its non-executable nature and debugging challenges, and to enable easier prototyping and integration; the main contributors were Farhat (project direction), Farhan (technical design and implementation), Mohamed Faqiunus (module development and testing), and Sat Mazer (early design input).
• Architecture and Model Comparison: Farhat described the high-level architecture, noting that the Python model replaces the P4 and BMV2 simulator components but keeps the testing infrastructure unchanged, and highlighted that both models implement the same pipeline and logic, with the Python model offering simpler debugging and development but currently being single-threaded.
• Directory Structure and Technical Implementation: Farhan detailed the directory structure of the Python model, which mirrors the BMV2 model for ease of transition, and explained how Python classes and methods map directly to P4 control blocks and actions, with global objects used for headers and metadata to simplify implementation.
• CI/CD Workflow Integration: Farhan outlined the CI/CD workflow, explaining that the BMV2 and Python model CI pipelines are separated so that each only triggers on relevant file changes, improving efficiency and resource usage.
• Development and Testing Process: Farhan described the development workflow: developers update the code, generate runtime files for SAI headers and APIs, run the Python model and associated services in containers, and execute PTF and Pytest test suites to verify integration and correctness before deployment.
• Current Status and Future Plans: Farhan reported that the Python model implements the full DASH pipeline, including routing, packet parsing, table lookups, and integration with the data plane application and SAI thrift communication, with all tests passing; future work includes challenger testing, fast path integration, and adding multi-threading for performance.
• Live Demonstration: Farhan demonstrated the Python model's operation by running it alongside the DPM, SAI thrift server, and test suites in separate terminals, confirming that all PTF and Pytest tests passed successfully and showing that the model is functionally equivalent to the P4 implementation.

• Open Source Availability and Community Access: Ramesh inquired about the open source status of the Python model, and Farhan confirmed that it is available for everyone, with documentation and instructions provided, and offered to share the PR link and contact details for further questions or feedback.

• Documentation and Support: Farhan stated that documentation and setup instructions are included, and encouraged users to reach out via email, group chat, or PR comments for support or to provide feedback.
• Containerized Deployment: Farhan clarified that the Python model runs within a container, requiring only Docker and the necessary images, making it straightforward for individuals to deploy and test on their own resources.

• Performance and Functional Equivalence Discussion: Ramesh asked about the performance of the Python model compared to the P4/BMV2 implementation, and Farhat explained that the current focus is on functional equivalence, with performance improvements and multi-threading planned for future development.

• Performance Considerations: Farhat acknowledged that the Python model is currently single-threaded and may have performance limitations compared to the C++-based BMV2 simulator, but emphasized that the initial goal is to match the P4 model's functionality, with performance enhancements to be explored in the future.

• Weekly Project Status and PR Review:

• PR Trends and Reporting: Kristina presented a Power BI dashboard summarizing PR activity over the past 21 days, including merged and created PRs, and indicated plans to share such snapshots in future communications.
• Review of Awaiting and Completed Work: Kristina reviewed items awaiting review, such as SRC MAC rewrite and HA test cases, and noted completed work including fixes for flex counters, ENI counter tests, and the decision to close the HLD for the container offloader in favor of a different direction.
• Coordination with Technical Steering Committee: Kristina mentioned ongoing efforts to gain access and coordinate with the SONiC technical steering committee to streamline review and management of PRs and labels.
• Highlight of Notable PRs: Kristina highlighted several interesting PRs, such as the deprecation of traditional flex counter support, ENI-based forwarding tests, and fixes for SONiC management tests, and invited further discussion on specific PRs from the group.

• OCP SAI Repository PR Process and Contacts: Farhan asked about the process for getting PRs reviewed in the OCP SAI repository, and Kristina offered to help by adding the PRs to the project and reaching out to potential contacts, with Murali suggesting possible contacts and Kristina agreeing to follow up via email..

 

Sticky for Links/Reference:
DASH Groups to join to receive Invites, Meeting Notes, and Comms	DASH: https://groups.google.com/g/sonic-dash     DASH-Test-Workgroup Group: https://groups.google.com/g/sonic-dash-test-workgroup   Linux Foundation list: https://lists.sonicfoundation.dev/g/SONiC-Dash	If anyone knows potentially interested people who would like info re: our community, please have them joins these groups for receive Comms, etc…
Recordings	Teams: Recap: SONiC-DASH Workgroup Community Meeting Wednesday, October 22 | Meeting | Microsoft Teams DASH Community https://youtu.be/rrPbTnIHkcc	10/22/2025 DASH Community Call; please request access via the link if you are not able to view/listen
Azure DASH GitHub Repo:	https://github.com/sonic-net/DASH
Test/Docs folder:	https://github.com/sonic-net/DASH/blob/main/test/docs/dash-test-workflow-saithrift.md	Ideal test workflow is here, converted to .md
SAI Thrift	SAI Thrift PR	Client server needed for testing
P4	https://opennetworking.org/p4/ and https://p4.org/working-groups/	Open source, domain-specific programming language for network devices, specifying packet processing for data plane devices (switches, routers, NICs, filters, etc.)
PINS	https://opennetworking.org/pins/
PNA consortium spec	https://p4.org/p4-spec/docs/PNA-v0.5.0.html	An architecture describing the structure and common capabilities of network interface controller (NIC) devices which process packets transiting one or more interfaces and a host system. Describes the structure and capabilities of the pipeline, and a user program, which specifies the functionality of the programmable blocks within that pipeline. For more information, see the P4 Language Consortium specifications
IPDK	Infrastructure Programmer Development Kit (ipdk.io) and https://github.com/ipdk-io/ipdk-io.github.io	IPDK is an open source, vendor agnostic framework of drivers and APIs for infrastructure offload and management which runs on a CPU, IPU, DPU or switch. IPDK runs in Linux and uses a set of well-established tools such as DPDK and P4 to enable network virtualization.
bmv2	https://github.com/p4lang/behavioral-model	The second version of the reference P4 software switch, nicknamed bmv2 (for behavioral model version 2). The software switch is written in C++11. It takes as input a JSON file generated from your P4 program by a P4 compiler and interprets it to implement the packet-processing behavior specified by that P4 program
DPDK	https://www.dpdk.org/	DPDK is the Data Plane Development Kit which consists of libraries to accelerate packet processing workloads running on a wide variety of CPU architectures.
Linux Foundation SmartSwitch	https://lists.sonicfoundation.dev/g/sonic-smartswitch/calendar

  

Thank you again for your participation…

Kristina Moore MBA, M.S., CISSP - Azure Core Principal PM / DASH & SmartSwitch
Office: 425-722-7720     Mobile: 425-876-2040     Email: kri...@microsoft.com
DASH Group to join: https://groups.google.com/g/sonic-dash    
Linux Foundation:  https://lists.sonicfoundation.dev/g/SONiC-Dash

 

[Kristina Moore]

Hello DASH Community - we are cancelling tomorrow due to the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday week due to stakeholders enjoying time off.  

I did open Issue 2193 (below) and started to fill out the table (per our convo last week) re:

[DASH] [SmartSwitch]: Counter Identification, Definition and Standardization https://github.com/sonic-net/SONiC/issues/2139

I'll send our prior weeks' meeting notes tomorrow.  I hope everyone has a good Thanksgiving.