We are happy to announce that the Industry Perspectives Panel will be held on July 19th at 5:50 UTC. For Netdev conf 0x15 we will get the NIC vendor's perspective on Smart NICs.
Smart NICs are a new emerging type of NICs which have built in processors alongside rich ASIC-based packet processing pipelines.
The tradition of the Industry Perspectives is to maintain an open mind so contrarian perspectives are accepted; for example: A vendor is allowed to say Smart NICs are a bad idea as long as they back their claim or that they dont support or want to support Linux within the NIC. By Linux we mean the Linux kernel network stack of course. Then the questions is: What are the requirements that Linux needs to support to turn around any skeptical vendor? For vendors supporting Linux, what is the format in which the kernel running within the NIC operates and interacts with the host? What is offloaded from within the NIC's kernel vs the host's?
The panel format is a few technical slides from each vendor describing the features they offer, their differentiation and if they support Linux the interaction with Linux. This is followed by questions from the panel and then an open floor for audience Q&A.
We will be providing more information as to which vendors will be participating in the next few days.
cheers, jamal