The DPDK Governing Board convened on September 16, 2025, with a quorum of members present. The meeting covered a wide range of project updates and strategic initiatives. A Tech Board update was provided, highlighting that the release candidate for DPDK v.25.11 is on track for October. The deprecation of the 32-bit x86 architecture has been postponed, as testing for this compilation will continue due to ongoing benefits. The ecosystem is growing, with a new IronCore project, dpservice, now listed on the DPDK website for its use of the Graph framework.
A key topic of discussion was the evolving approach to AI-generated code contributions. The board confirmed that such code is currently permissible under the Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO) policy, aligning with Linux Foundation standards. While the Tech Board is considering options for tagging AI-assisted code in the future, the practicality of this is in question, and legal responsibility for any submission remains with the developer. The project is also evaluating the effectiveness of AI code review tools and the potential for developing a customized, DPDK-specific solution.
UNH Interoperability Lab is making significant progress with the DPDK Test Suite (DTS), and the board is currently evaluating whether it wishes to continue to hire DTS Student Developers in 2026 as an elective expense. With this in mind, UNH Lab representative Patrick Robb presented the progress of the 2025 developers to the board. He stated that the 2025 student developer program has been successful, more than doubling the number of test suites and delivering substantial framework improvements that simplify setup and usage. If the program continues in 2026, it would focus on advancing testing priorities, including virtio/virtualization, RTE_FLOW, and cryptodev coverage. The Governing Board will review a formal proposal to approve this elective expense at a future meeting.
DPDK marketing efforts continue to gain momentum with a robust content pipeline focused on the project’s 15th-anniversary, including user stories and technical blogs. The strategic shift to distributing news primarily via LinkedIn on a quarterly cadence has resulted in significantly increased engagement. On the events front, planning is underway for a major DPDK summit in Europe for Spring 2026, and several possible European cities with corresponding venues are being evaluated for availability, cost, and accessibility.
