Author: Joseph White

Web 3.0 – The Future of Decentralized Storage

Joseph White
Decentralized storage is bridging the gap between Web 2.0 and Web 3.0, and its impact on enterprise storage is significant. The topic of decentralized storage and Web 3.0 will be the focus of an expert panel discussion the SNIA Networking Storage Forum is hosting on June 1, 2023, “Why Web 3.0 is Important to Enterprise Storage.” In this webinar, we will provide an overview of enterprise decentralized storage and explain why it is more relevant now than ever before. We will delve into the benefits and demands of decentralized storage and discuss the evolution of on-premises, to cloud, to decentralized storage (cloud 2.0). We will also explore various use cases of decentralized storage, including its role in data privacy and security and the potential for decentralized applications (dApps) and blockchain technology. Read More

A Q&A on the Open Programmable Infrastructure (OPI) Project

Joseph White
Last month, the SNIA Networking Storage Forum hosted several experts leading the Open Programmable Infrastructure (OPI) project with a live webcast, “An Introduction to the OPI (Open Programmable Infrastructure) Project.” The project has been created to address a new class of cloud and datacenter infrastructure component. This new infrastructure element, often referred to as Data Processing Unit (DPU), Infrastructure Processing Unit (IPU) or xPU as a general term, 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. Our OPI experts provided an introduction to the OPI Project and then explained lifecycle provisioning, API, use cases, proof of concept and developer platform. If you missed the live presentation, you can watch it on demand and download a PDF of the slides at the SNIA Educational Library. The attendees at the live session asked several interesting questions. Here are answers to them from our presenters. Q. Are there any plans for OPI to use GraphQL for API definitions since GraphQL has a good development environment, better security, and a well-defined, typed, schema approach? Read More

An Overview of the Linux Foundation OPI (Open Programmable Infrastructure)

Joseph White
A new class of cloud and datacenter infrastructure component is emerging into the marketplace. This new infrastructure element, often referred to as Data Processing Unit (DPU), Infrastructure Processing Unit (IPU) or xPU as a general term, 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 Open Programmable Infrastructure (OPI) project has been created to address the configuration, operation, and lifecycle for these devices. It also has the goal of fostering an open software ecosystem for DPUs/IPUs covering edge, datacenter, and cloud use cases. The project intends to delineate what a DPU/IPU is, to define frameworks and architecture for DPU/IPU-based software stacks applicable to any vendors’ hardware solution, to  create 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, DASH, and SPDK to create new APIs for interaction with and between the elements of the DPU/IPU ecosystem: Read More