Linux Foundation Makes Arthur Release of Dent

December 18, 2020

Arthur — the first code release of Dent is a project to enable the creation of a Network Operating System (NOS) for Disaggregated Network Switches in campus and remote enterprise locations. Since its December 2019 launch, several companies have joined Dent as general members, including Innovium, Arcadyan, Aviz Netorks, and Alpha Networks who are joined by Dent premier members Amazon, Delta Electronics Inc, Marvell, NVIDIA, Edgecore Networks, and Wistron NeWeb (WNC).

The Arthur release – aptly named after Arthur Dent, the protagonist character of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy– uses the recently released Linux 5.6 Kernel and leverages SwitchDev to simplify integrations, eliminate complex abstractions and SDK change management, and support existing Linux tool chains. In addition to providing the industry’s widest range of hardware options, the Arthur release includes over 25 key features to enable enterprise infrastructure teams to safely transition to disaggregated networks.

“With the Arthur release, we’re witnessing the makings of an open network operating system, control plane and management plane that will transform how enterprises address their distributed edge challenges,” said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking, Edge and IoT, at The Linux Foundation. “The DENT community has grown quickly and executed on this first major code release at a time when the entire industry is rethinking the future of retail and campus environments.”

The networking industry is moving away from customized, proprietary solutions for telecom, cloud and enterprise data center markets in favor of open standards. However, these open advancements have failed to meet the specific needs of distributed enterprise edge networking, such as a simplified networking OS stack that is low cost and Linux-based. DENT enables an open community to build this solution without complicated abstractions. It uses the Linux Kernel, Switchdev, and other Linux-based projects to allow developers to treat networking ASICs and silicon like any other hardware. This simple disaggregated Linux/SwitchDev-based switch ultimately simplifies integration across the ecosystem and encourages application developers to adopt this new standard.