Dave Barach is a Cisco Fellow specializing in high-speed packet processing on
commodity hardware. Dave has worked on the fd.io vpp stack for more than a
dozen years (and counting). Dave started programming in 1968, and has written
all sorts of high performance software as well as highly scalable performance analysis
tooling.
Ed Warnicke is a Distinguished Consulting Engineer in the Chief Technology
and Architecture Office (CTAO) office at Cisco Systems. He has been working
for over a decade in many areas of networking and Open Source. He has been
a member of the OpenDaylight TSC since its inception and currently serves as
a committer elected member of the OpenDaylight TSC. He is a founding TSC
member at ONAP. Ed has a masters in Physics (String Theory) from Rutgers University.
George has 25 years of working experience in networking, software architecture
and has been an open source evangelist for the past 4 years. He currently
is director of open source and ecosystem at Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.
George received a bachelor in E.E. from McGill University and master’s on
computer engineering from the University of Toronto.
Ray Kinsella is a Software Architect at Intel, where he has been working
on the software defined data plane projects for more than 10 years. He has
been interested in and working on open source technologies in various roles
for more than twenty years. He has been recently most active in the FD.io
community, but is a pretty constant lurker in many others. Ray holds a M.Sc.
in Advanced Software Engineering from University College Dublin.
Joel Halpern is a Distinguished Engineer with Ericsson. He has been involved
with Router implementation, architecture, and design since the late 1980s. He
has been an active member of the IETF, and has written or coauthored RFCs
across a range of topics. He has significant experience with many different
protocols for forwarding plane control dating back to the mid 1990s.
It is with a heavy heart that we share news that the DPDK and FD.io communities have lost a key founding member of the communities: Venky Venkatesan has passed away following a long battle with cancer. We’d like to express our utmost condolences to Venky’s family, friends, and extended community during this incredibly sad time. Venky was an extremely inspiring man who exuded greatness all around; he will be dearly missed.
Affectionately known as “The Father of DPDK,” a nod to his invention and creation of DPDK approximately ten years ago (before it was called DPDK), his footprints across the industry and the globe, are everywhere: Venky was deeply involved in the PICMG ATCA specification, creating a new bladed form factor for telecom equipment. He touched on and gave guidance to projects spanning FD.io (of which he was a sitting TSC member), Linux/netdev, DPDK, Intel
QuickAssist Technology, BSD stacks, OVS, OPNFV, all-things-virtualization (KVM, Xen, VMware, Hyper-V, etc.), ETSI, IETF, containers, and so many other arenas. Venky regularly spoke at technical conferences including Intel Developer Forum, DPDK Summit, and various other workshops spanning FD.io, NFV, SDN, and virtual switching.
Those who knew him and engaged him, especially on deep technical discussions, knew they were talking to someone with the rare combination of skills that went incredibly deep both on the hardware (silicon) side of platforms, but also on the software (networking) side of platforms. Venky was well-versed on a range of topics beyond technical themes. His mind could engage you on subjects ranging from football (soccer) to photography, to history, to politics, and many other domains. Conversations with Venky were a treat. Traveling with him was an adventure. Debating with him was a lesson. We will so miss all of him.
In addition to many friends and colleagues, Venky left behind a wife and two young daughters. A GoFundMe memorial fund to establish a college fund for his daughters has been set up to honor his legacy of mentoring and developing the next generation of engineers and scientists: https://www.gofundme.com/venky-venkatesan-memorial-fund
The DPDK release, 18.05, and the FD.io release, 18.04, were named in Venky’s honor as well.
Please join us in expressing our gratitude for all that Venky gave to the world during the too-short time he was here, as well as our deep sadness in losing a great friend, colleague, and mentor.