In-network P4-based low latency robot arm control

Abstract

Advances in Software Defined Networking data plane programmability are being fueled by new domain languages like P4, enabling to program the behavior of networking devices. At the crossroads, new types of applications in different verticals (e.g., industry 4.0, agriculture IoT, medicine) are developing new visionary footprints through the arrival of 5G networks. Many of the envisioned applications (e.g. automation control) require high reliability and very low latency with bounded guarantees. In-network hardware solutions defined in P4 can become enabling solutions to support these kind of applications. In this work, we present a strawman robot arm control application running inside a P4 switch capable of parsing robot arm position messages to timely craft a message within a TCP connection to send a stop command at very low latency scales