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F-Stack – A network development kit with high performance based on DPDK

(www.f-stack.org)
67 points anon6362 | 1 comments | 30 Aug 25 12:37 UTC | HN request time: 0.209s | source
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alexdns ◴[30 Aug 25 13:30 UTC] No.45074520[source]▶
It was considered innovative when it was first shared here eight years ago.
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nurumaik ◴[30 Aug 25 13:52 UTC] No.45074700[source]▶
Anything more innovative happened since (honestly curious)?
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js4ever ◴[30 Aug 25 14:51 UTC] No.45075146[source]▶
I don't think so, but my guess is raw performance rarely matters in the real world.

I once explored this, hitting around 125K RPS per core on Node.js. Then I realized it was pointless, the moment you add any real work (database calls, file I/O, etc.), throughput drops below 10K RPS.

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antoinealb ◴[30 Aug 25 15:14 UTC] No.45075358[source]▶
The goal of this kind of system is not to replace the application server. This is intended to work on the data plane where you do simple operations but do them many time per second. Think things like load balancers, cache server, routers, security appliances, etc. In this space Kernel Bypass is still very much the norm if you want to get an efficient system.
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eqvinox ◴[30 Aug 25 16:17 UTC] No.45075829[source]▶
> In this space Kernel Bypass is still very much the norm if you want to get an efficient system.

Unless you can get an ASIC to do it, then the ASIC is massively preferrable; just the power savings generally¹ end the discussion. (= remove most routers from the list; also some security appliances and load balancers.)

¹ exceptions confirm the rule, i.e. small/boutique setups

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gonzopancho ◴[30 Aug 25 19:03 UTC] No.45077150[source]▶
ASICs require years to develop and aren’t flexible once deployed
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eqvinox ◴[30 Aug 25 21:22 UTC] No.45078128[source]▶
You don't develop an ASIC to run a router with, you buy one off the shelf. And the function of a router doesn't exactly change day by day (or even year by year).
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1. nsteel ◴[01 Sep 25 11:08 UTC] No.45091677[source]▶
My colleagues are always writing new features for our edge and core router ASICs released more than 10 years ago. They ship new software versions multiple times a year. It is highly specialised work and the customer requesting the feature has to be big enough to make it worth-while, but our silicon is flexible enough to avoid off-loading to slow CPUs in many cases. You get what you pay for.