2025 Webinar Series
Webinar 4: From Slingshot to Ultra Ethernet - Building a Transport Standard for Libfabric
In lieu of the traditional OFA Workshops, this year, OFA is excited to provide a webinar series covering a variety of relevant topics and providing an accessible, virtual resource for our members and those interested in learning more about the industry. We hope you will join us!
This fourth webinar delves into the semantic and reliability layers of UET, explaining how they are built to support Libfabric and the communication APIs above it. You’ll also hear how UET draws inspiration from the Slingshot Transport, evolving its ideas to serve both HPC and AI workloads. The talk will conclude with a discussion on how the differing requirements between AI and HPC allowed new optimizations and efficiencies in transport design.
OFA Webinar Series 2025 – Webinar #4
From Slingshot to Ultra Ethernet: Building a Transport Standard for Libfabric
Presented by: Keith Underwood, Senior Distinguished Technologist, HPE High Performance Networking Business Unit
Wednesday, November 12, 2025 | 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM ET / 8:00 AM – 9:00 AM PT
Keith Underwood - Senior Distinguished Technologist, HPE High Performance Networking Business Unit
Keith Underwood is a Senior Distinguished Technologist in the HPE High Performance Networking Business Unit, where he leads next-generation NIC architecture definition. He serves as the editor of the UEC Transport Semantic specification and is an active contributor to the UEC Transport definition.
Before joining Cray (now part of HPE), Keith was a founding member of the Omni-Path team at Intel, where he led the Omni-Path 2 NIC architecture. He was part of the team that created the Portals 4 API, which seeded the Libfabric definition, and was a key contributor to developing the MPI-3 RMA extensions.
Keith brings decades of expertise in high-performance networking, helping shape the standards and architectures that drive modern HPC and AI systems.
