A new class of cloud and datacenter infrastructure is emerging into the marketplace. This new infrastructure element, often referred as Data Processing Unit (DPU) or Infrastructure Processing Unit (IPU), takes the form of a server hosted PCIe add-in card or on-board chip(s), containing one or more ASIC’s or FPGA's, usually anchored around a single powerful SoC device. The DPU/IPU-like devices have their roots in the evolution of SmartNIC devices but separate themselves from that legacy in several important ways. The OPI project has been created to address these questions and to foster the emergence of such an open and creative software eco-system for DPU/IPU based cloud infrastructure. The project intends to delineate what a DPU/IPU is, to loosely define a framework(s) and architecture for a DPU/IPU-based software stack(s) applicable to any vendors hardware solution, to allow the creation of a rich open source application ecosystem, to integrate with existing open source projects aligned to the same vision such as the Linux kernel, IPDK.io, DPDK and SPDK to create new APIs for interaction with and between the elements of the DPU/IPU ecosystem: * the DPU/IPU hardware * DPU/IPU hosted applications * the host node * remote provisioning software * remote orchestration software
OPI (Open Programmable Infrastucture)
- OPI introduction
- OPI workstream definitions and status
- How you too can contribute to OPI.
A new class of cloud and datacenter infrastructure is emerging into the marketplace. This new infrastructure element, often referred as Data Processing Unit (DPU) or Infrastructure Processing Unit (IPU), takes the form of a server hosted PCIe add-in card or on-board chip(s), containing one or more ASIC’s or FPGA's, usually anchored around a single powerful SoC device. The DPU/IPU-like devices have their roots in the evolution of SmartNIC devices but separate themselves from that legacy in several important ways. The OPI project has been created to address these questions and to foster the emergence of such an open and creative software eco-system for DPU/IPU based cloud infrastructure. The project intends to delineate what a DPU/IPU is, to loosely define a framework(s) and architecture for a DPU/IPU-based software stack(s) applicable to any vendors hardware solution, to allow the creation of a rich open source application ecosystem, to integrate with existing open source projects aligned to the same vision such as the Linux kernel, IPDK.io, DPDK and SPDK to create new APIs for interaction with and between the elements of the DPU/IPU ecosystem: * the DPU/IPU hardware * DPU/IPU hosted applications * the host node * remote provisioning software * remote orchestration software
- OPI introduction
- OPI workstream definitions and status
- How you too can contribute to OPI.
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- Venkat PullelaKeysight Technologies
With the NVMe/TCP and disaggregated storage gaining rapid market adoption, it is more clear than ever that Storage Initiator (SI) needs to be more performant and efficient to provide applications w
DPUs (data processing units) are an exciting new category of processor that complement CPUs and GPUs inside data centers.
As hardware layers in storage systems (such as network and storage devices) continue to increase in performance, it is vital that the IO software stack does not fall behind and become the bottlenec
In this presentation, we will describe a complete end-to-end Software Defined Storage (SDS) solution for cloud data centers using Infrastructure Processing Units (IPUs).
- Lev SolomonovLightbits Labs
NOTE: this paper was developed by Ziye Yang, a Staff Software Engineer at Intel and is being presented by colleague Yadong Li, a Principal Engineer in the Ethernet Products Group at Intel.
Local disk emulation using domain-specific hardware poses a great opportunity for innovation in the storage domain.
Infrastructure offload based around NVMe-oF can deliver performance of direct attached storage with the benefits and composability of shared storage.
Connecting remote storage to compute node requires adding and configuring software stacks for “storage over network” in the compute node.
- Tomasz ZawadzkiIntel Technology Poland
SNIA Developer Conference
September 15-17, 2025
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