OpenDesc: From Static NIC Descriptors to Evolvable Metadata Interfaces

Lahmer, Seyyid;Tyunyayev, Nikita;Barbette, Tom
(2025) HotNets ’25: 24th ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks — Location: UMD Campus College Park MD USA (1.November.2025)

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Modern NICs offer rich functionalities, but host-side software lacks a unified way to express or adapt to their capabilities. Instead, developers rely on device-specific code and ad-hoc glue layers, leading to duplication, reduction to the lowest common denominator, inefficiency, and poor reuse. As NICs grow more flexible, the lack of a shared interface description becomes a core architectural bottleneck. We propose OpenDesc, a common description interface based on P4. While P4 is typically used to define the data plane, we additionally repurpose it to allow the NIC and host to describe their roles in packet exchange. The host declares an intent, specifying what functionalities should be implemented by the NIC. Fixed-function NICs describe what functionalities they can provide and their interface. Programmable NICs describe the constraints of their interface. OpenDesc uses the combinations of intents and capabilities to select a NIC-compatible descriptor format and compile a NIC-specific driver code that is tailored to the application's intent. Missing features are implemented in software, or pushed to the programmable pipeline if available. We showcase a prototype OpenDesc compiler that can select the fittest interface from the NIC interface description, and generate the associated host code for multiple NICs. The OpenDesc prototype enables access to the metadata sent from the NIC in eBPF through XDP or userlevel programs directly accessing the NIC descriptors. Our compiler is a first step towards enabling a generated minimalist driver datapath that can leverage the growing capabilities of increasingly feature-rich NICs.
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Lahmer, S., Tyunyayev, N., & Barbette, T. (2025). OpenDesc: From Static NIC Descriptors to Evolvable Metadata Interfaces. HotNets ’25: Proceedings of the 24th ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks. Published. HotNets ’25: 24th ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks, UMD Campus College Park MD USA. https://doi.org/10.1145/3772356.3772418 (Original work published 2025)