A draft TC charter has been submitted to establish the Infrastructure Data-Plane Function (IDPF). In accordance with the OASIS TC Process Policy section 2.2: (https://www.oasis-open.org/policies-guidelines/tc-process#formation) the proposed charter is hereby submitted for comment. The comment period shall remain open until 23:59 GMT on 04 November 2022.
We encourage member comment. You may leave comments at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dlznLQ7SUjHlB1QZ-1rWD23gXlJPuc-r/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=108119555681699654923&rtpof=true&sd=true
OASIS also maintains a mailing list for the purpose of submitting comments on proposed charters. Any OASIS member may post to this list by sending email to: oasis-charter-discuss@lists.oasis-open.org . All messages will be publicly archived at: http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/oasis-charter-discuss/ . Members who wish to receive emails must join the group by selecting "join group" on the group home page: http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/oasis-charter-discuss/ . Employees of organizational members do not require primary representative approval to subscribe to the oasis-charter-discuss e-mail.
Comments received will be reviewed by the proposers and a log of the comments and their resolution will be posted to oasis-charter-discuss mailing list before the telephone call with the convener.
A telephone conference will be held among the Convener, the OASIS TC Administrator, and those proposers who wish to attend no more than four days after the comment period closes. The announcement and call-in information will be noted on the OASIS Charter Discuss Group Calendar.
We encourage member comment and ask that you note the name of the proposed TC (IDPF) in the subject line of your email message. Comments received will be reviewed by the proposers and a log of the comments and their resolution will be posted to oasis-charter-discuss mailing list before the telephone call with the convener.
If you wish to be listed as a co-proposer in the Call for Participation, please contact the convener Michael Orr at michael.orr@intel.com no later than 14 November 2022. For representatives of OASIS organizational members, a statement of support from their Primary Representative will be required.
--- Draft charter ---
IDPF Technical Committee Draft Charter
Section 1: TC Charter
(1)(a) TC Name
Infrastructure Data-Plane Function (IDPF) TC
(1)(b) Statement of Purpose
This project defines a standardized, multi-vendor PCIe Network Data-plane Function Device.
Compliant implementations provide high throughput over Ethernet and RDMA, allow live migration and decoupling of Tenants and Data center operator Infrastructure operations.
Devices can be composed in any manner desired, including support for SR-IOV, SIOV or fully/partially emulated devices
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The project defines the Host Interface, Device Behavior, setup, and configuration flows. The result can be presented to the Operating system as a physical Function (PF) or a virtual function (VF) PCIe device, as needed.
The purpose of this project is to define a standardized Network Data-Plane Function PCIE device that satisfies multiple goals:
- High throughput/low-overhead operation
- Remove most of the CPU cost of emulated interfaces
- Decouple Tenant and data-center operations
 o Zero downtime for Tenants while Datacenter operator is free to bring down server for maintenance
 o Allow live migration of tenants and data-center service nodes
- Standardized interface for scalability and ease of configuration and operation
- Offer Tenants to be offered additional features and accelerations to keep up evolving demands
- Feature negotiation and extensibility to allow scalable provisioning and orchestration
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None of the standard interfaces available in the market today provide for all of these needs at once.
Business Benefits
This project is aimed at meeting the needs of
- Operators of large data centers (especially public cloud service providers), and their Tenants
- Vendors of Host-attached networking devices (NICs, Accelerators, etc.)
Having a Multi-vendor Standard device allows both sides to scale their efforts, and make them more efficient:
- Vendors can avoid per-customer customization while still allowing feature extensibility and âsecret sauceâ differentiation
- Datacenter operators will have a scalable solution that can be orchestrated as a generic good, avoiding the need for per-supplier customization and constraints. i.e. make Host-attached networking devices more uniform in treatment, while still getting maximum performance and minimum coupling to a specific vendor or product version/generation.
- Tenants will be able to get high-throughput feature-rich networking connectivity, over standard transports, while being decoupled from the Datacenter operator concerns and constraints Â
(1)(c) Scope
Scope of the TC
1. Interface & behavioral model of an IDPF device as seen by an IDPF driver
2. API & Descriptor formats
3. Initialization/reset, configuration & Operational Flows
4. Base IDPF specification + Capability Discover/Negotiation mechanism
Out of scope for TC work are
1. Testing framework for any specific Deviceâs Compliance
2. Code/Specification for any Offloading service not part of the base IDPF specification (i.e. Per-vendor/Per-case Extensions)
(1)(d) Deliverables
The TC will deliver
1. A specification of the Interface and Behavioral model of an IDPF-conformant device
 - 1st Draft to be submitted to TC soon after formation
2. A reference SW Device
 - 12m after TC formation
3. A reference IDPF driver
 - Intel/Google Device driver soon after TC formation
 - (if Needed) Driver for Reference Device : 12m after TC formation
(1)(e) IPR Mode
TC will follow the Non-Assertion mode
(1)(f) Audience
Networking SW architects & Implementers Â
OS device Driver Writers
PCIe Network-cards, IPUâs and Accelerator vendors
OEMâs & OSVâs
O/S Vendors
Data-center Operators
(1)(g) Language
TCâs language will be English
Section 2: Additional Information
(2)(a) Identification of Similar Work
This project draws inspiration from
- NVMe â a standard multi-vendor PCIe storage device
- virtIO and Especially Virtio-Net track
The project is aimed at allowing communication over Ethernet and RDMA transports
- Ethernet â IEEE802.3
- RDMA
- RoCE
(2)(b) First TC Meeting
TC meeting will be held Virtually on Dec 15th Â
(2)(c) Ongoing Meeting Schedule
TC will carry out its work by Electronic communications, with no mandatory Face to Face, in-person attendance.
TC members may modify this later
(2)(d) TC Proposers
* Prashant Chandra/Google - prchandra@google.com
* Prasun Kapoor/Marvell - pkapoor@marvell.com
* Anjali Singhai Jain/Intel - anjali.singhai@intel.com
* Don Skidmore/Intel - donald.c.skidmore@intel.com
* Sridhar Samudrala/intel - sridhar.samudrala@intel.com
* Keren Guy/Intel - keren.guy@intel.com
(2)(e) Primary Representatives' Support
* Michael Orr michael.orr@intel.com :Â As OASIS primary representative for Intel, I confirm our support for the proposed IDPF TC charter and endorse our participant listed above.
* Prashant Chandra Âprchandra@google.com :Â As OASIS primary representative for Google, I confirm our support for the proposed IDPF TC charter and endorse our participant listed above.
* I, Cary Ussery, cussery@marvell.com, as OASIS primary representative for Marvell, confirm our support for the IDPF TC and our participants listed above as named co-proposers.
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(2)(f) TC Convener
Michael Orr  Â
michael.orr@intel.com
Intel NCNG Strategy & Roadmap office
(2)(g) Anticipated Contributions
Work done jointly by Google Â& Intel will be contributed to the TC as a starting point for the work. Â
(2)(i) FAQ Document
N/A (yet)
(2)(j) Work Product Titles and Acronyms
IDPF specification
IDPF Driver
IDPF Reference Device
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