Software Networks

8Concretization and Morphware Networks

Concretization is the reverse of virtualization: the question becomes one of how to make the move from software to hardware but preserve the same degree of agility as software. In other words, the idea of concretization is to replace the software with hardware that is instantaneously reconfigurable, so that the software running on the reconfigurable processor can instantly be replaced by different software. Figure 8.1 illustrates the relationship between the processes of concretization and virtualization. However, it should be understood that the hardware which is the startpoint of virtualization is nothing like the hardware produced by concretization. For example, the original hardware might be a router, and that router cannot be replaced by another machine. Concretization produces hardware which can be modified instantaneously (or almost instantly) so as to become a different device from the current one. Obviously, the objective is to speed up the execution of the software obtained by virtualization.

Figure 8.1. The process of concretization

8.1. Accelerators

One initial solution to speed up the computation of software is represented by accelerators. Many different types of performance accelerators are already on the market, including DPDK (Data Plane Development Kit). The DPDK environment is a collection of data plane libraries and ...