We hope you are keeping safe and healthy, as we all adjust to the new normal we find ourselves in, with coronavirus and social unrest around us. We’re proud of the leadership of our technical community to tackle our own issues and moving to more inclusive language, removing divisive terminology (e.g master/slave) that does not reflect our community values. Thank you for your leadership and work. It is greatly appreciated.
The DPDK project Governing Board, Technical Board, Marketing and other working groups have been busy over the past couple months.
The Governing Board has held two meetings since the lock-downs went into effect, in April and early June, reassessing the project budget, marketing and event plans, while the Technical Board continued to focus on the technical priorities of DPDK, with the recent release of 20.05. Our community continues their stellar reputation of delivering our releases on time. Well done!
As we will not be able to meet in person for some time, and unable to provide the usual Governing Board readout on stage at one of the DPDK Summits, we wanted to provide a short written update, that we will continue on a regular basis moving forward. And we do apologize for not providing more timely governing board activity updates in the past. We will strive to improve and keep the communication open and timely. Do not hesitate to reach out should you have any questions.
DPDK Welcomes New Members
Our community thrives through the work of the community and the financial support enabled by our members. We are pleased to share recent additions to the DPDK Project membership. The DPDK Project welcomes Microsoft as our newest Gold member, with Mr. Douglas Stamper joining the Governing Board, bringing his expertise with DPDK and the Windows ecosystem. Additionally, AMD joined as a Silver member. Welcome to both companies!
DPDK Userspace Summit 2020 Moves to a Virtual Format
Due to the prevailing coronavirus situation across the globe and related travel restrictions, we made the difficult decision to transition the DPDK Userspace Summit to a virtual experience, happening September 22-23. The Call for proposals and registration are now open. Note that the CFP closes July 12. Please consider submitting an abstract! We hope you will join us!
DPDK will continue to monitor the prevailing situation and assess the feasibility of safely holding physical community gatherings. Please bear with us.
- China and Japan events are on hold. It is currently looking unlikely we can make in-person events happen in 2020.
- The US DPDK Summit event is pushed out to Q1 of 2021.
Strategic and Financial Update
It is of note that the DPDK project is in a financially sound position to see 2020 through, under the watchful gaze of the Governing Board’s Financial committee, chaired by Rashid Khan from Red Hat.
The Governing Board reviewed and approved an updated 2020 budget including our anticipated 2020 expenses of $316k, deferring unused event allocations to our reserve fund, in anticipation of 2021 events and the Community Lab expansion.
The Governing Board has noted the importance of member retention and recruitment, particularly in these uncertain times, with the formation of a Strategic Outreach working group, comprised of a sub-group of Governing Board members, tasked with ensuring the identity, focus, and charter of DPDK is clearly captured, published and communicated, along with a clear and compelling membership value proposition.
Towards this end, the Governing Board in conjunction with the Technical Board, has spent the last month reviewing and updating the DPDK Charter, which has not seen any significant changes over the past 3 years. The edits will bring the Charter up to date and serve as a current reflection of the project as it is today.
The DPDK Project has also launched a new project analytics dashboard, providing insights into development activity and contributions. We continue to be an active healthy community. Please try out the new tool. Let us know if you feel the data is accurate and reflects the community breadth of contributors.
Community Lab Expansion
As Jim and Thomas shared in an earlier message to the community, we have been evaluating the value and role of the DPDK Community Lab, hosted at University of New Hampshire’s InterOperability Lab, (UNH IoL). Upon the recommendations of the Technical Board, the lab continues to play a key role in regression testing. The Governing Board has approved up to $35,000 in additional investment to expand the test coverage and support provided to the community through the Community Lab. We anticipate increasing the depth and breadth of test cases available to the community.
The Community Lab meets on a bi-weekly basis and is open to the DPDK community. We would encourage you to participate – reach out to ci@dpdk.org to be added to the meeting calendar invite.
DPDK Marketing Activities
The marketing working group has a new project whitepaper and companion video series, to be published in the coming month. Keep an eye out for it!
In 2020, DPDK celebrates 10 years as an active open source project from its formative years at Intel. We have come a long way since then, becoming the world’s leading open source packet processing tool kit. Stay tuned for a fun look back across the past 10 years.
Expect to see some exciting things happening over the next couple months. Stay tuned for more! And please let us know if you would like more information on any of these topics.