We are pleased to announce that the System Boot and Security Microconference has been accepted into the 2019 Linux Plumbers Conference! Computer-system security is a topic that has gotten a lot of serious attention over the years, but there has not been anywhere near as much attention paid to the system firmware. But the firmware is also a target for those looking to wreak havoc on our systems. Firmware is now being developed with security in mind, but provides incomplete solutions. This microconference will focus on the security of the system especially from the time the system is powered on.
Expected topics for this year include:
Come and join us in the discussion of keeping your system secure even at boot up.
We hope to see you there!
We are pleased to announce that the Power Management and Thermal Control Microconference has been accepted into the 2019 Linux Plumbers Conference! Power management and thermal control are important areas in the Linux ecosystem to help improve the environment of the planet. In recent years, computer systems have been becoming more and more complex and thermally challenged at the same time and the energy efficiency expectations regarding them have been growing. This trend is likely to continue in the foreseeable future and despite the progress made in the power-management and thermal-control problem space since the Linux Plumbers Conference last year. That progress includes, but is not limited to, the merging of the energy-aware scheduling patch series and CPU idle-time management improvements; there will be more work to do in those areas. This gathering will focus on continuing to have Linux meet the power-management and thermal-control challenge.
Topics for this year include:
- CPU idle-time management improvements
- Device power management based on platform firmware
- DVFS in Linux
- Energy-aware and thermal-aware scheduling
- Consumer-producer workloads, power distribution
- Thermal-control methods
- Thermal-control frameworks
Come and join us in the discussion of how to extend the battery life of your laptop while keeping it cool.
We hope to see you there!
We are pleased to announce that the Android Microconference has been accepted into the 2019 Linux Plumbers Conference! Android has a long history at Linux Plumbers and has continually made progress as a direct result of these meetings. This year’s focus will be a fairly ambitious goal to create a Generic Kernel Image (GKI) (or one kernel to rule them all!). Having a GKI will allow silicon vendors to be independent of the Linux kernel running on the device. As such, kernels could be easily upgraded without requiring any rework of the initial hardware porting efforts. This microconference will also address areas that have been discussed in the past.
The proposed topics include:
Come and join us in the discussion of improving what is arguably the most popular operating system in the world!
We hope to see you there!
Here is an update regarding the registration situation for LPC2019.
The considerable interest for participation this year meant that the conference sold out earlier than ever before.
Instead of a small release of late-registration spots, the LPC planning committee has decided to run a waiting list, which will be used as the exclusive method for additional registrations. The planning committee will reach out to individuals on the waiting list and inviting them to register at the regular rate of $550, as spots become available.
With the majority of the Call for Proposals (CfP) still open, it is not yet possible to release passes. The planning committee and microconferences leads are working together to allocate the passes earmarked for microconferences. The Networking Summit and Kernel Summit speakers are yet to be confirmed also.
The planning committee understands that many of those who added themselves to the waiting list wish to find out soon whether they will be issued a pass. We anticipate the first passes to be released on July 22nd at the earliest.
Please follow us on social media, or here on this blog for further updates.
We are pleased to announce that the VFIO/IOMMU/PCI Microconference has been accepted into the 2019 Linux Plumbers Conference!
The PCI interconnect specification and the devices implementing it are incorporating more and more features aimed at high performance systems. This requires the kernel to coordinate the PCI devices, the IOMMUs they are connected to and the VFIO layer used to manage them (for user space access and device pass-through) so that users (and virtual machines) can use them effectively. The kernel interfaces to control PCI devices have to be designed in-sync for all three subsystems, which implies that there are lots of intersections in the design of kernel control paths for VFIO/IOMMU/PCI requiring kernel code design discussions involving the three subsystems at once.
A successful VFIO/IOMMU/PCI Microconference was held at Linux Plumbers in 2017, where:
- The ground work for paravirtualized IOMMU (virtio-iommu) was defined
- Implementation of surprise removal kernel policy was debated and brought a solution forward
- Advanced Error Reporting (AER) user space interface was proposed and agreed upon
- Configuration Request/Retry Status (CRS) handling and kernel implementation were defined
- Shared Virtual Address (SVA) solutions from x86 and ARM were highlighted and the microconference discussions laid the path towards a unified solution
This year, the microconference will follow up on the previous microconference agendas and focus on ongoing patches review/design aimed at VFIO/IOMMU/PCI subsystems.
Topics for this year include:
- VFIO
- IOMMU
- DMA-API layer interactions and how to move towards generic dma-ops for IOMMU drivers
- PCI
- Resources claiming/assignment consolidation
- Peer-to-Peer
- PCI error management
- prefetchable vs non-prefetchable BAR address mappings (cacheability)
- Kernel NoSnoop TLP attribute handling
- CCIX and accelerators management
Come and join us in the discussion in helping Linux keep up with the new features being added to the PCI interconnect specification.
We hope to see you there!
We are pleased to announce that the Scheduler Microconference has been accepted into the 2019 Linux Plumbers Conference! The scheduler determines what runs on the CPU at any given time. The lag of your desktop is affected by the scheduler, for example. There are a few different scheduling classes for a user to choose from, such as the default class (SCHED_OTHER) or a real-time class (SCHED_FIFO, SCHED_RT and SCHED_DEADLINE). The deadline scheduler is the newest and allows the user to control the amount of bandwidth received by a task or group of tasks. With cloud computing becoming popular these days, controlling bandwidth of containers or virtual machines is becoming more important. The Real-Time patch is also destined to become mainline, which will add more strain on the scheduling of tasks to make sure that real-time tasks make their deadlines (although, this Microconference will focus on non real-time aspects of the scheduler. Please defer real-time topics to the Real-time Microconference). This requires verification techniques to ensure the scheduler is properly designed.
Topics for this year include:
Come and join us in the discussion of controlling what tasks get to run on your machine and when.
We hope to see you there!
We are pleased to announce that the RDMA Microconference has been accepted into the 2019 Linux Plumbers Conference! RDMA has been a microconference at Plumbers for the last three years and will be continuing its productive work for a fourth year. The RDMA meetings at the previous Plumbers have been critical in getting improvements to the RDMA subsystem merged into mainline. These include a new user API, container support, testability/syzkaller, system bootup, Soft iWarp, and more. There are still difficult open issues that need to be resolved, and this year’s Plumbers RDMA Microconfernence is sure to come up with answers to these tough problems.
Topics for this year include:
- RDMA and PCI peer to peer for GPU and NVMe applications, including HMM and DMABUF topics
- RDMA and DAX (carry over from LSF/MM)
- Final pieces to complete the container work
- Contiguous system memory allocations for userspace (unresolved from 2017)
- Shared protection domains and memory registrations
- NVMe offload
- Integration of HMM and ODP
And new developing areas of interest:
- Multi-vendor virtualized ‘virtio’ RDMA
- Non-standard driver features and their impact on the design of the subsystem
- Encrypted RDMA traffic
- Rework and simplification of the driver API
Come and join us in the discussion of improving Linux’s ability to access direct memory across high-speed networks.
We hope to see you there!
The current pool of registrations for the 2019 Linux Plumbers Conference has sold out.
Those not yet registered who wish to attend should fill out the form here to get on the waiting list.
As registration spots open up, the Plumbers organizing committee will allocate them to those on the waiting list with priority given to those who will be participating in microconferences and BoFs.
The LPC committee is pleased to announce the preliminary schedule for the 2019 Linux Plumbers Conference.
The vast majority of the LPC refereed track talks have been accepted and are listed there. The same is true for microconferences. While there are a few talks and microconferences to be announced, you will find the current overview LPC schedule here. The LPC refereed track talks can be seen here.
The call for proposals (CfP) is still open for the Kernel Summit, Networking Summit, BOFs and topics for accepted microconferences.
As new microconferences, talks, and BOFs are accepted, they will be published to the schedule.
We are pleased to announce that the Databases Microconference has been accepted into the 2019 Linux Plumbers Conference! Linux plumbing is heavily important to those who implement databases and their users who expect fast and durable data handling.
Durability is a promise never to lose data after advising a user of a successful update, even in the face of power loss. It requires a full-stack solution from the application to the database, then to Linux (filesystem, VFS, block interface, driver), and on to the hardware.
Fast means getting a database user a response in less that tens of milliseconds, which requires that Linux filesystems, memory and CPU management, and the networking stack do everything with the utmost effectiveness and efficiency.
For all Linux users, there is a benefit in having database developers interact with system developers; it will ensure that the promise of durability and speed are both kept as newer hardware technologies emerge, existing CPU/RAM resources grow, and while data stored grows even faster.
Topics for this Microconference include:
- The architecture of individual databases
- The kernel interfaces utilized, particularly those critical to performance and integrity
- What is a general performance profile of databases with respect to kernel interfaces
- Database difficulties with the kernel
- What kernel interfaces are particularly useful
- What kernel interfaces would have been nice to use
- Work arounds caused by lack of proper system calls
- The direction of database development and what interfaces to newer hardware, like NVDIMM and atomic write storage, would be desirable
Come and join us in the discussion about making databases run smoother and faster.
We hope to see you there!
