An SDN

As part of our DPU Services team, which is responsible for all custom networking development based on the SDKs of commercially available SmartNICs and DPUs (NVIDIA BlueField/ConnectX, AMD Pensando, Intel IPU), you will actively contribute to projects involving P4 programmable networking. You will help evaluate P4 as a foundation for offloading SDN functions onto these cards, supporting the company’s activities and growth ambitions.

In next-generation datacenters and clouds, DPUs (Data Processing Units) and SmartNICs take care of tasks that server CPUs should no longer have to handle: virtual switching, security, encryption, storage, telemetry, and more, at 200 or 400 Gb/s. The P4 language makes it possible to program their packet-processing pipelines directly, and it has proven itself at very large scale: Microsoft Azure relies on P4 specifications (the open-source SONiC-DASH project) to offload its stateful networking services onto DPUs. But how capable are P4, its tools and its performance in practice across different manufacturers? Your internship will answer this question through measurements and prototypes.

This final-year internship will give you the opportunity to gain first‑hand experience in the world of DPUs, work with the latest‑generation hardware in our lab (servers, SmartNICs/DPUs, TRex and Spirent traffic generators), develop your high‑performance networking skills and put the knowledge acquired during your studies into practice in an innovative and stimulating environment.

As such, your main responsibilities will be the following:

• Map out P4 use cases in the SDN ecosystem: architectures (PSA, PNA), control plane (P4Runtime), open-source projects (SONiC-DASH, OPI, ONOS, P4-DPDK, eBPF backend, etc.) and use cases (virtual switching, VXLAN/Geneve overlays, load balancing, firewalls, INT telemetry, 5G UPF, etc.), assessing their actual maturity;
• Benchmark P4-based SDN solutions on commercially available SmartNICs/DPUs — AMD Pensando (SSDK, P4-16), Intel IPU (programmable FXP pipeline in P4), NVIDIA BlueField-3 (DOCA Pipeline Language, derived from P4-16) — and compare them with native offload on ConnectX-7/BlueField-3 (ASAP², OVS-DOCA), assessing language coverage, compilation and debugging toolchains, P4Runtime integration, performance and ecosystem sustainability;
• Implement a P4-offloaded OVS switch on the selected platform: a P4-defined L2/L3 and VXLAN switching fast path, controlled by the Open vSwitch control plane via P4Runtime, then benchmarked against native offload in terms of throughput, latency and host CPU load;
• Implement a stateful L4 firewall offloaded to P4: track TCP/UDP connections directly in the data plane (PNA architecture “add-on-miss” tables, flow aging), with filtering policies managed by the controller, then characterize performance in terms of connections per second, concurrent connections, throughput and resilience to SYN floods;
• Present and showcase your work through a benchmark report, architectural recommendations for the team’s solutions, demonstrators and, where appropriate, open-source contributions.The internship will result in the development of an integrated prototype covering a functional scope defined at the beginning of the internship, together with tests, documentation and an analysis of limitations and possible next steps.

You will be supervised by DPU Services architects and engineers and will work using agile methods within a rapidly growing team, where your results will directly influence our technical decisions.

REQUIRED AND DEVELOPABLE SKILLS

• C Networking: Ethernet, IP, TCP/UDP, L2/L3 switching, VLAN/VXLAN, principles of filtering and connection tracking;
• Development: C and Python on Linux, Bash scripting, Git;
• Methodology: Enjoy experimenting and taking measurements, rigor in test protocols, critical thinking when analyzing result.
• P4 programming on hardware targets,
• OVS offload and hardware-based connection tracking,
• network benchmarking at 100 Gb/s and beyond.
• Some initial exposure to P4 (university project, p4lang tutorials with BMv2/Mininet), DPDK, eBPF/XDP or Open vSwitch would be appreciated.

PROFILE

• Third-Third-year engineering student specializing in networking, computer science or embedded systems;
• Curious, ambitious and passionate about high-tech and applications based on new technologies;
• Enjoy working as part of a team and taking initiatives;
• Enthusiastic about being part of a human adventure and working in an agile environment;
• Comfortable in English, particularly in a technical context.

Are you passionate about high-tech and cutting‑edge technologies? Do you want to be part of a human adventure and develop in an agile, dynamic and collaborative environment? This internship