Governing Board Minutes

Introduction of New Participants:

Two new participants in the project were introduced to the board: tech writer David Thomas, who begins his contract on the project on June 12th, and marketing coordinator Benjamin Thomas of the Linux Foundation.

Community Lab Updates

A winter storm temporarily deprived the Community Lab of power in January. More recently, FIPS testing has been brought online, catching up the DPDK sample application to the formats used by NIST and their ACVP API, the automated process to move their encryption test vectors to/from their systems for validation. This was merged into the 22.11 release. Arm brought a new hardware system into the lab based on the Ultra CPU. Test coverage has also been extended for all applicable OSes to arm64 systems, effectively doubling the coverage. The Lab is continuing to contribute to the DTS improvements and merge into the DPDK main line. The RFC patch for DTS smoke tests has been submitted for the 23.07 release.  And finally,  in terms of bare metal and NIC enhancements, per the 2023 lab plans, each Gold member has been contacted about their desired NIC upgrade(s) or expansion(s) for the lab’s coverage. Initial responses led to a multiphase plan including: the purchase of three NICs, with three direct installs into existing servers and the third installed into a server donated by intel; the development of a plan for a 4th NIC that will involve retiring an older NIC, having a gold member request to select an alternate, and exploring alternate server install locations; and the gathering of information on two additional requests that were non-NICs/development platforms. 

Tech Board Updates

DPDK 23.03 was released recently. In addition to this there were still some new devices/drivers/libraries happening on the project – including support for Arkville cards, which is an RTL for FPGAs for the PCI side. There was a new driver to support one of Intel’s new IPU chips, a smart NIC with an ASIC, and there was a machine learning library MLL – a library to expose some machine learning accelerators had by Marvell on their chips under SLCs.  In addition to the new hardware/drivers/libraries, DPDK has new crypto, new algorithms, updates to many drivers. In terms of hardware offloading, for RT flow, there are new rules.  Regarding LTS releases, 3 streams are in progress: 20.11, 21.11, and 22.11. 

Financial Updates

The project retains a healthy financial surplus. Current projections for 2023 expenditures have increased slightly given the hire of David Thomas as Tech Writer, the approval of travel reimbursements for Governing Board and Tech Board Members for the Dublin 2023 Userspace Event, and a slight increase in marketing allotments for coordinator Benjamin Thomas. The project’s revenues for 2023 are now projected to be close to its expenditures. 

Marketing Updates

Newly appointed marketing coordinator Ben Thomas, from the Linux Foundation, laid out a metric-driven strategy to more effectively and broadly reach the DPDK community in the months ahead. He observed that outstanding work is happening around the project and in its community, but DPDK needs a greater volume of content, sent out more frequently and strategically, to keep everyone informed of recent developments. Mr. Thomas presented a two-phase strategy to make this happen, that included maintaining current membership status through 2024 renewals by increasing brand awareness, and increasing the user and contributor base by boosting community reach and awareness.  Mr. Thomas then laid out a plan for systematically mapping out the KPIs across the website and across social media, falling into categories including website, social media, live video webinars, email communications, blogs and collateral, and PR outreach. These strategies will be carried out in the months ahead.

Event Updates

The DPDK Governing Board previously approved budget coverage of select Governing Board and Tech Board expenses for Userspace 2023, to take place in Dublin, Ireland from Sep. 12-13, 2023. The project is still working on securing a venue for the event, and exploring several options with Events Coordinator Evi Harmon, of the Linux Foundation. In the weeks and months ahead, Ms. Harmon’s team plans to coordinate various critical aspects of event planning that include launching the CFP, setting up and launching an event website, setting up event registration, and ultimately posting the speaker agenda once it has been decided by the Program Committee. The Events Team will be onsite in Dublin during Userspace to ensure a successful experience for all onsite and virtual attendees. 

Marketing Evaluation: A discussion took place regarding a pending choice between a proposed customization of the current Linux Foundation Tier 3 marketing package and a proposed outsourcing to Open Infra, a small marketing agency in Frisco, Texas. Hilary Carter, SVP of Research and Communications for Linux Foundation, joined the meeting and led board members through a deck that presented many of the benefits associated with retaining Linux Foundation as our marketing arm; the board also reviewed the presented benefits of outsourcing. Ultimately a formal decision was deferred by the board until a successive Governing Board meeting. The board requested a comparison of the two options with quantified breakdowns of deliverables in the interim. A formal vote and decision will take place at the next Governing Board meeting on the basis of these findings. 

Member Renewal and Budget Discussion: Most members have either paid their 2023 LF project renewals or set renewals in motion; those that haven’t have expressed a firm commitment to doing so.

A 2023 budget review detailed the carryover from 2022, as well as the projected membership dues and expenses for 2023, including rough high-level projections for marketing and events, bearing in mind that forthcoming decisions in both areas will help define and shape these costs more precisely. Overall the project is in a strong place fiscally with a surplus, and the Governing Board voted to approve the 2023 budget with no immediate objections presented.

Events Discussion: A discussion took place regarding options for a single in-person DPDK event, likely to take place in September 2023. The team has explored various cities as possibilities and leans toward Dublin, Ireland given the logistical feasibility of this choice, the presence of several tech heavyweights in that area and the strong turnout for prior Open Source events over the past year.  With this in mind, the LF events coordinator has been asked to run high-level costs, including venue costs, for Dublin at that time. It was agreed that said event will be a hybrid one, with live and virtual options. Specific costs from the coordinator will be reviewed by Board Members via email, and formal decisions on venue and event budget made in successive Governing Board meetings. 

Brief Summary of Governing Board Minutes from 10/11/22

Introduction: Two new arrivals on the project, Robin Giller of intel (replacing St. Leger) and Evi Harmon of LF Marketing (replacing Emily Ruf) introduced themselves and discussed their professional backgrounds.

Changes in Representation: A discussion took place on the pending replacement of the Governing Board Chair. The group also discussed the prospective addition of a vice chair to DPDK, which will necessitate modifications to the language of the current DPDK charter. The group agreed to formally make this decision regarding new charter language, and proceed with the vice chair nomination, via email.

Marketing and Events Updates: The group recapped on registration numbers and attendance for Userspace, and also discussed issues tied to the virtual experience on Zoom for Userspace attendees and strategic ways to enhance the virtual (remote) experience in the future. Several End User Stories were reviewed, as well as forthcoming marketing and outreach efforts.

Financial Updates: DPDK is in healthy financial shape at present, but the networking industry in general faces some key challenges over the coming year. The project is currently in the process of going through membership renewals for 2023.  We need Governing Board approval on the Statement of Work for the University of New Hampshire Community Lab for 2023.

UNH Lab Updates: Operational costs for the Lab in 2023 have increased slightly despite no changes to the SOW. The Governing Board requested additional clarity on this and agreed to seek it via email prior to approving said budget.

Tech Board Updates: The GB tech board rep discussed some concerns regarding the merge of a new Google Driver, tied to the fact that the base code has an MIT license, and the DPDK charter only covers a BSD license. The group discussed the proposed modification of the DPDK charter to cover both licenses. The process of hiring a tech writer is underway. The group also discussed the addition of KPI trackers in the near future.

Discussion re: Changing Perceptions of DPDK: Some concerns were raised during the Userspace event about the  public perception that DPDK has a high barrier to entry. Comments shared at Userspace indicated a concern about DPDK’s high barrier to entry. A team is now looking into the comment to see if it’s a widely shared view, and if it is, what might the project community do about it.