Paper Title: Creating Software That 'Just Works' on SmartNICs

Paper Abstract: Programmable SmartNICs are obviously a great idea with their flexibility and positioning at the edge where the action and the data both reside. However, the question is, "Who is going to develop all that software and be sure it interoperates?" Developers need a compliance certification program based on hardware and firmware standards. It ensures that the current piece of software will work properly and subsequent layers will also work. It also provides validation for externally supplied software. Arm SystemReady is an example program. It uses the Base System Architecture (BSA) and Base Boot Requirements (BBR) specifications, plus a selection of supplements. The compliance certification program tests and certifies that systems meet the SystemReady standards, giving designers confidence that operating systems (OS) and subsequent layers of software will also "just work". The savings in development, integration, and testing time, as well as in later maintenance and support, will be extraordinary!

Paper Author: Dong Wei, Standards Architect, Arm

Author Bio: Dong Wei is a Lead Standards Architect and Fellow at Arm. He leads the Arm SystemReady Program. He has significant experience in leading the industry in innovations and standardization. He is the Vice President (Chief Executive) of the UEFI Forum and co-chairs its ACPI Working Group. He is a Board member of the PCI SIG and co-chairs its Firmware Working Group. He is a Board member and the Secretary of the CXL Consortium. He is a member of the Incubation Committee at the OCP Foundation. He is a Senior Member of IEEE. Before joining Arm, Wei was VP/Fellow at Hewlett-Packard and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). As the Chief Architect for UEFI and ACPI, he led the definitions of the interfaces of hardware, firmware, and operating systems for x64, x86, Arm, ia64, RISC-V and PA-RISC based systems. He earned an MSEE from the University of Idaho and an MBA from California State University - Sacramento. He has five published articles.