Hello,
I'm currently a Computer Science student at the Federal University of Sao Carlos, Brazil. I have some background in operating systems and (mainly) networking technologies, from academic networking projects to OpenFlow research & development. I am interested in participating in this Google Summer of Code, as one of the project ideas on the Linaro Wiki ignited my curiosity...
The OpenDataPlane project is really interesting, as it can provide high-performance, hardware-offloaded throughput for networking applications. From an outsider point of view, ODP seems like the answer (from the ARM universe) to Intel's DPDK, but with the advantage of being truly open and portable.
An outreach program such as GSOC allows students to leave their comfort zone, to learn something new and contribute to a project. Albeit I have no prior OpenDataPlane knowledge, I have been reading the available documentation for ODP since the mentoring organizations list was announced.
In the long run, I expect to study if it's feasible to use OpenDataPlane as a lower level API for implementing OpenFlow components, and eventually port and run OpenFlow on top of ODP. However, the 12 weeks for the GSOC is likely too short for such a project.
On the other hand, the "lightweight IP stack on top of OpenDataPlane" project suits the GSOC very well due to well-defined and progressive milestones. Developing this project in an iterative fashion would reduce the risks associated with the GSOC schedule. Plus, having an IP stack on top of ODP could potentially increase the project's visibility :)
Despite all my interest, there's still a catch... I don't have any ODP-enabled SoC at university. I have read on the website about the Linux-based environment and API. Would it suffice for the GSOC project? It's an important question, as this may affect the performance evaluation proposal at the end of the project.
I think that's it for now. Please post any questions / answers / critics / suggestions, as I would like to know if I'm on the right way,
Thanks,
Ricardo Gesuatto