OpenFabrics Alliance 2023 Virtual Workshop Recap

/ / Consortium News, Workshops

Annual Workshop Showcases the Bleeding Edge of Networking with Two Keynotes and a Full Program of Expert Sessions 

The OpenFabrics Alliance (OFA) wrapped up another successful Annual OFA Workshop last month, which featured a program of technical sessions and keynotes from the networking industry’s brightest minds. The Workshop – sponsored by Cornelis Networks – was held Tuesday, April 11 – Thursday, April 13 and proved once again to be an invaluable asset for the OpenFabrics community to come together ad discuss emerging fabrics technologies, future industry requirements, and new challenges on the horizon.   

This year’s Technical Program Committee (TPC) developed another strong agenda that covered advanced network technology, innovative networking approaches, and the open community, and its success was evidenced by a significant increase in the number of attendees and represented companies.

Keynotes Highlight Major Trends Set to Impact the Future of Networking

The OFA was fortunate enough to secure two very well-regarded thought leaders as keynotes for the 2023 Workshop.

Dr. Aditya Akella, Regents Chair Professor of Computer Science at University of Texas at Austin, kicked off the event with a presentation on “The Next Decade of Networking: Challenges and Opportunities.” In his keynote, Dr. Akella identified what he sees as the pressing challenges and opportunities in the networking industry, including extreme performance demands, unpredictable application workloads, and compute technology limitations. While these challenges represent a perfect storm for the industry, they also offer significant opportunities for the start of a golden age of networking.

View a recording of the keynote here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDejeoxXN7A

On day two, Dr. Debendra Das Sharma, a Senior Fellow at Intel and Chair of the UCIe Consortium, reprised his role as an OFA Workshop keynote from 2022 to deliver an address on “UCIe: Building an Open Ecosystem of Chiplets for On-package Innovations.” Dr. Das Sharma provided an in-depth look at the new chiplet interconnect technology and the newly formed standards group spearheading efforts to build an open chiplet ecosystem. His presentation introduced features in the UCIe 1.0 specification and explored how UCIe will enable users to easily mix and match chiplet components from a multi-vendor ecosystem for System-on-Chip (SoC) construction, including customized SoC. 

View a recording of the keynote here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-Oz_09SXCk

OFA Community Technical Sessions and Updates Now on Demand

We had 19 technical sessions at the core of the OFA Workshop 2023 with speakers from the industry’s leading companies, institutions, and organizations. The presentations provided updates on the latest OFA initiatives, innovative networking approaches, emerging technology standards, and academic research. 

As an open source organization, the OFA freely publishes the resulting materials of each annual Workshop for the benefit of the wider networking community. You can find the complete collection of this year’s Workshop presentations, demos, and video recordings on the OFA Virtual Workshop 2023 page.

Stay Engaged and Let Us Know What You Think!

As the OFA Community and networking industry continues to evolve, so too will the annual OFA Workshop to ensure that all opinions, voices, and inputs are heard, considered, and built upon. The OFA values collaboration among its members and the community as a whole, and our annual workshop is .

If you have any questions, or suggestions on how to improve our next event, especially as we look to resume in-person activities in 2024, please email press@openfabrics.org.

Thank you to the OFA Virtual Workshop 2023 speakers, attendees, sponsors, and organizers for their excellent contributions to this year’s program.

Stay tuned for more updates on our plans for 2024!