PKache: A Generic Framework for Data Plane Caching

In-network caching promises to improve the performance of networked and edge applications as it shortens the paths to data. This is by storing so-called hot items in the network switches on-route between clients accessing the data and the storage servers. Since the data flows through those switches in any case, it is natural to cache hot items there.Most software-managed caches treat the cache as a fully associative region. Alas, a fully associative design seems to be at odds with programmable switches' goal of handling packets in a short bounded amount of time, as well as their restricted programming model. In this work, we present PKache, a generic framework that employs limited associativity design and the domain-specific P4 language for data plane caching. We demonstrate PKache's utility by realizing multiple popular cache management schemes.