Life at a Networking Vendor - Keeping up with the Joneses

Explore a conference talk that delves into the challenges and rewards of working as a kernel developer for a networking hardware vendor. Gain insights into balancing community expectations with internal and external demands, developing new features to showcase hardware capabilities, and managing various software and hardware considerations. Learn about the complexities of supporting different frameworks, operating systems, and functionality requirements while maintaining direct contact with hardware and firmware developers. Discover the speaker's experiences in navigating customer and partner expectations alongside community needs, and understand the intricacies of developing features for Linux kernel, DPDK, VPP, and other platforms.

Introduction
Disclaimer
Not about switching hardware
Our Goal
Defining Best
Smart Net
Most Programmable FPGA
Firmware
Best is Different
Line Rate
Not everything we deal with
Component costs
Cost savings
Offloads
Hardware Support
offload
TLS offload
One of the hardest parts
It makes things exhausting
Users dont want to offload anything
Smart or dumb NICs
Lowcost dumb NIC
Generalpurpose processors
Smart NIC
Free Range Routing
OpenVSwitch
FPGA
FPGA Framework
Best Firmware
Hardware Features
Firmware Versions
Open Source
Upstream
Upstream or Die
Driver Support
Hardware Vendors
XTP
Dynamic Interrupt
Chaining Together
Vector Drivers
RTE Flow
Kernel Bypass
DeFX
FXEP
Goals
XDP saves instructions
All these things are important
Show focus on everything
Help users today
IETF
QA
Reimplemented
Hardware JRO