Dear DPDK Community Members,


In Dublin, I gave a short talk that I'd like to re-summarize as follows: 


The DPDK project has a healthy budget and room to make additional financial investments in 2024. We want to invest our budget in ways that grow adoption of the Data Plane Development Kit software - expanding DPDK geographically and across new industries. Such investments should also financially strengthen the project. As community members, you’re encouraged to bring our Governing Board proposals for investment opportunities, within the sphere of network packet processing.


Our areas of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:


·  Adding switching

·  Adding encryption

·  Adding more user space compatibility

·  Protocol stacks

·  Optical Burst Switching

·  Enterprise Security

- Lab Testing of NICs



If you have an idea for an investment along these lines that might interest us, the process is as follows: 


  1. You author a 1-2 page prospectus outlining the initiative that you have in mind, its benefits, its risks, foreseen challenges and opportunities to be seized, as well as high level cost estimates including people, resources and funds.  It must be DPDK-centric to be evaluated.
  2. Submit your  proposal to me and I will share it with the board.
  3. It will then be assigned to a particular DPDK Governing Board Meeting, and circulated to board members by Rashid, Robin and Nathan, approximately 1 week prior to the meeting, to give the board time to think it over. Meetings happen every six weeks.
  4. Your pitch will be placed on the board agenda for discussion. 
  5. You will then attend the meeting, pitch your proposal live to our Governing Board members, do a Q&A, and we will take a vote to either approve or reject - mirroring the reality TV program Shark Tank.


For those of you not familiar with this program here is a link to its wiki page as well as a youtube excerpt.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shark_Tank

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYeUHvoLfg4


Any questions, please let us know. 


Thanks,


Nathan



Nathan C. Southern, Project Coordinator

Data Plane Development Kit

The Linux Foundation

248.835.4812 (mobile)

nsouthern@linuxfoundation.org