2024-01-25 LDCG SC Meeting Agenda/Minutes

 Agenda

• Previous meeting minutes: 2023-12-07 LDCG SC Meeting Agenda/Minutes
• Project updates
• Strategy and direction for 2024
• Events
• AOB

Documents

• Meeting recording: https://linaro-org.zoom.us/rec/share/BhD5h8SgU1bnCLXuSbPD0nsBb_ykVJrNIPCbBEjjzN7RZ0D69B4VxzcJ2L5SDZ1s.Aomp92gBGOWyXOOC?startTime=1706191127000
  Passcode: X==yHb^1

Action Items

• Leonardo Garcia will check the state of Rust with Linaro tool chain team. Andy brought a concern he has that we check to avoid any future shortcomings as we saw with OpenJDK.

Minutes

• Project updates
  
  • System Ready Compliant Platform Collaboration (SRCPC)
    
    • Document with current accomplishments and short term objectives
    • Project mailing list: https://op-lists.linaro.org/archives/list/asa-dev@op-lists.linaro.org/.
    • Jonathan: There are gaps in QEMU CI. Features broke and no one noticed soon. Maybe this is something we could explore.
  • Deploy CCA on Arm Platforms (DCAP)
    • Leonardo: We are able to run QEMU emulating an sbsa-ref machine type with RME support and launch a realm inside this emulated environment using QEMU. This is still in an internal repository, but we will publish something soon.
    • Kevin: Finishing the CCA attestation token rust library that will be integrated into Confidential Containers (CoCo).
• Strategy and direction for 2024
  • Leonardo: Strategy and direction didn't chage much from the past year. Main challenges continue the same.
  • Leonardo: Securing data in virtual environments will be mainly focused on CCA work. Last year we had some OP-TEE requirements, but I didn't see any this year.
  • Leonardo: We will continue to foster interoperability between different vendors by continuing our work on enabling proper SystemReady in QEMU.
  • Leonardo: We will not work on BMC software this year.
  • Leonardo: CCA will continue to be our main priority this year. In the next steering committee meeting we will have a demo of the QEMU work we have done so far.
  • Leonardo: Linaro has been working on the attestation side of Confidential Containers, but as the Arm team that used to work on Kata Containers has been dismantled, we might need to work on some of this basic enablement as well.
  • Leonardo: Linaro has been discussing with members the concept of building a remote attestation verification service.
  • Jon: Mark Hambleton expressed his concerns around the usage of Veraison on the last Linaro Partner Meeting. We need to make sure we are all aligned in this area.
  • Leonardo: I agree that we need to get alignment on the software stack but, at this point, I am more concerned about the service architecture and what standards we need to discuss to have this built. Which software implementation we will use, we can figure out later.
  • Jon: There are some features missing in the current implementation of some of the architecture features. E.g. Memory encryption, devices assignments (brought by Jonathan in the chat).
  • Leonardo: As said before, we will continue to work on QEMU as an SBSA reference platform. We almost have level 3 support and we have good progress with level 4. We will try to balance this with some of the other requests we have in this area.
  • Leonardo: OpenBMC will continue to stay in the back log, as we don't have enough engineers to address that this year again.
  • Leonardo: Linaro will continue to maintain lots of projects that are interesting for this group.
  • Leonardo: Big Top project was also affected by the changes in Arm OSS organization in China. That will reduce the pace we are delivering features in this project.
  • Andy: Any investigation in the state of Rust? Is there any gaps?
  • Leonardo: AFAICT Rust works fine. It has been used in a number of projects internally at Linaro and in the community. Any specific concerns?
  • Andy: Are we able to prevent the need to stand up an initiative like what we had to do with OpenJDK? Although OpenJDK and Rust are different things, I want to make sure we looked at this.
  • Jon: The difference is that Rust is leveraging existing tool chains, while OpenJDK was writing its own JIT from sracth.
  • Leonardo: I will ask the tool chain team about this.

• Events

  • Supercomputing SC23: November 12-17, 2023, Denver, CO, USA

    • Kamatsuka-san attended.

    • Kamatsuka-san: Talked to UXL folks. Fujitsu joined the UXL Foundation last year. But we still don't see any topics to discuss with Linaro and other members.

    • Kamatsuka-san: Discussions around HPC and LLVM. Community things there are stil some performance issues with flang.
    • Leonardo: We keept touching UXL as a discussion topic. Is there anything we should discuss together on this topic or bring as a new work item?
    • Andy: We should be looking at UXL. UXL is currently being looked by the Automotive LoB instead of the Infra LoB. Arm is having internal discussions about whether this topic should be part of the Infra LoB targets as well.
    • Andy: One way to start would be to engage in LLVM discussions around SYCL support. Intel is asking for patch reviews.
    • Jon: Should we have a specific discussion about UXL and alternatives?
    • Leonardo: Sure, I will schedule it for next steering committee meeting.
    • Grant: Is this a Data Center specific conversation, or should we do it wider?
    • Jon: I think it should be wider.
    • Grant: This is a good topic for the Linaro Technical Forums sessions.
  • FOSDEM 2024: February 3-4, 2024, Brussels, Belgium
    • Confidential Computing dev room.

  • Any other events where we could collaborate or where you think Linaro should do a demo or present.

• AOB