We’re excited to share with you the news that a new major release, DPDK 23.07, is now available for download. Here, we will take a detailed look at what this release brings to the table, the contributors behind it, and what lies ahead for the DPDK community.
Unpacking DPDK 23.07
Despite the overall number of commits being modest at 1028, this release signifies a considerable amount of work as indicated by the number of changed lines: 1554 files were altered with 157260 insertions and 58411 deletions. This endeavor was not a small feat as it involved 178 authors who each put their expertise and dedication into making this release possible.
Community Engagement and Contributions
Our doors are always open for more hands, and we encourage anyone willing to contribute in various stages of the process. There is a wide array of areas you can help in, such as testing, review, or merge tasks. Every contribution, no matter how small, brings us one step closer to our common goal.
It’s worth noting that there is no plan to start a maintenance branch for 23.07. However, this new version is ABI-compatible with 22.11 and 23.03, which means it will interact seamlessly with the binaries built with these older versions.
Notable New Features in DPDK 23.07
The new release brings forth several enhancements and features, promising an improved experience for users.
Some of these additions include the AMD CDX bus, PCI MMIO read/write capabilities.
It includes new flow patterns (Tx queue, Infiniband BTH), new flow actions (push/remove IPv6 extension) and also introduces an indirect flow rule list.
As well as a vhost interrupt callback, more ShangMi crypto algorithms, and a PDCP library.
We have also seen the removal of the LiquidIO driver, a move that aligns with the DPDK’s commitment to providing a refined and optimized toolkit.
Finally, this release includes a DMA device performance test application and there are some progress with the new DTS: it is able to run a basic UDP test now, improving utilities for developers.
More details about these changes can be found in the release notes here.
A Big Welcome to New Contributors
The DPDK community is growing, and 23.07 has seen contributions from 37 new contributors including authors, reviewers, and testers. We extend our warm welcome to all of them and appreciate their invaluable contributions.
DPDK 23.07 was not a solo effort. The release has seen contributions from multiple organizations, the leading contributors being:
Intel (252 commits), Marvell (225 commits), and NVIDIA (127 commits), among others. This community effort underlines the collaborative spirit of the DPDK project.
Reviewer Acknowledgements
A special thank you goes to all those who took up the often under appreciated task of reviewing other peoples work. Your efforts have been instrumental in maintaining the high quality of DPDK code. The top non-PMD reviewers, based on Reviewed-by and Acked-by tags, include Ferruh Yigit, Akhil Goyal, David Marchand, Chenbo Xia, and Bruce Richardson.
Looking Ahead
However, there is always room for improvement. There are currently more than 300 open bugs in our Bugzilla, and the number of comments in half-done work (like TODO, FIXME) is on the rise. This highlights a need for increased efforts in code cleanup.
Looking to the future, the next version, 23.11, is slated for release in November. We encourage developers to submit new features for this version within the next two weeks. You can find the next milestones here.
Mark Your Calendars
Lastly, don’t forget to register for the upcoming DPDK Summit in September. It’s a great opportunity to connect with the DPDK community, learn about the latest developments, and share your experiences.
A big thank you to everyone for your continuous contributions to DPDK. See you in Dublin for the DPDK Summit!
Get the 23.07 release here.