Linux Plumbers Conference 2018

Results from the 2018 LPC survey

Jake Edge — Mon, 08 Apr 2019 16:40:57 +0000

Thank you to everyone who participated in the survey after Linux Plumbers in 2018. We had 134 responses, which, given the total number of conference participants of around 492, has provided confidence in the feedback.

Overall: 85% of respondents were positive about the event, with only 2% actually saying they were dissatisfied. Co-locating with Kernel Summit proved popular, so we will be co-locating with Kernel Summit in 2019. Co-locating with Networking Summit was also well received, so we will be doing that again this year, too. Conference participation was up from 2017 and we sold out again this year. 98% of those that registered were able to attend.

Based on feedback from last year’s survey, we videotaped all of the sessions, and the videos are now posted. There are over 100 hours of video in our YouTube channel or you can access them by visiting the detailed schedule and clicking on the video link in the presentation materials section of any given talk or discussion. The Microconferences are recorded as one long video block, but clicking on the video link of a particular discussion topic will take you to the time index in that file where the chosen discussion begins.

Venue: 67% of survey respondents considered the size of attendees to be just right, however 25% would have like to have seen more able to attend. In general, 43% of respondents considered the venue size to be a good match, but a significant portion would have preferred it to be bigger (45%) as well. The room size was considered effective for participation by 95% of the respondents, however there was a clear indication in the comments that we need to figure out a better way to allocate rooms based on expected participants, as some ended up overflowing. There is some desire for additional electrical outlets to be made available, which will be looked into for the 2019 event.

Content: In terms of track feedback, Linux Plumbers Refereed track and Kernel Summit track were indicated as very relevant by almost all respondents who attended. The Networking track had fewer participants responding on the survey, but was positively reviewed as well. Hallway track continues to be regarded as very relevant, and appreciated.

Communication: This year we had a new website, and participants were able to navigate through it and find the session needed. In the feedback, there were some requests to integrate scheduling app capabilities (and attendee room size); the committee will look into options for that.

Events: Craft Beer was the most popular event and had favorable feedback from respondents. There were some concerns expressed in the written feedback that we didn’t clarify there were non-alcoholic options available there, and we’ll take note to communicate this better in future. The final closing event venue was originally planned for conference attendance similar to the prior year; the increase of 20% to 492 attendees, impacted this event, and the perception was that it was too crowded and had insufficient food from the comments.

There were lots of great suggestions to the “what one thing would you like to see changed” question, and the program committee has been studying them to see what is possible to implement this year. Thank you again to the participants for their input and help on making the Linux Plumbers Conference better in 2019 and the future.

Conference Videos now Posted

James Bottomley — Wed, 05 Dec 2018 01:01:06 +0000

Videos of Plumbers content now posted. You can either see them in our Youtube channel or by visiting the detailed timetable and clicking on the video link in the presentation materials section of any given talk or discussion. The Microconferences are recorded as one long video block, but clicking on the Video link of a particular discussion topic will take you to the time index in that file where the chosen discussion begins.

Sold out LPC 2018 starts in a week — info for attendees

Jake Edge — Wed, 07 Nov 2018 17:20:23 +0000

In just one week, the 2018 Linux Plumbers Conference will begin on November 13 with microconferences, a refereed track, Networking Summit track, Kernel Summit track, BoFs, and more. The conference is completely sold out at this point, sadly we cannot accommodate those on the waiting list. Below is some information for conference attendees.

We look forward to seeing all of the attendees in Vancouver next week …

Pick Up Your Badge Early:

Registration is located on the Junior Ballroom Foyer (North Tower Third Floor) of the Sheraton Wall Centre. Pre-registration will open Monday from 3:00pm to 5:00pm. General Registration will be open from 8:00am to 5:00pm Tuesday to Thursday.

View the Schedule:

Overview schedule
Detailed schedule

Please email contact@linuxplumbersconf.org if you’d like to request any changes.

Opening Reception:

Date: Tuesday, 13 November
Time: 6:30 – 9:30 pm
Location: Craft Beer Market, 85 W 1st Ave
Buses will depart from outside the North Tower from 6:30pm

Note: Craft Beer Market is at least 30 minutes walk from the hotel but is possible for the intrepid (and waterproof).

Closing Party at Blue Water Café:

Date: Thursday, 15 November
Time: 6:30 – 10:00 pm
Location: Blue Water Café: 1095 Hamilton St
Buses will depart from Outside the North Tower from 6:15pm

Note: The venue is 8 minutes walk from the Hotel for those who wish to brave the November weather

Lunch Details:

Lunch is on your own from 12:30 to 2:00 each day (though some microconferences may alter slightly). This year, we opted not to do lunch cards because of difficulties finding a Canadian card vendor and problems with currency conversion. The hotel does have an on-site restaurant in the North Tower, but it’s too small for all our attendees. A map with nearby restaurants is available (and hard copies can be had at the registration desk). For the adventurous, Davie Street, as the centre of the Gay Pride neighbourhood, has a lot of interesting restaurants and bars (Google is pretty up to date) but beware, they’re all rather small and some are cash only.

Venue Details:

Event Venue

1088 Burrard Street
Vancouver,
British Columbia
V6Z 2R9
Canada

Hotel, Parking & Transportation

Please refer to the Hotel Web page.

2018 Linux Plumbers Conference is almost completely full

Jake Edge — Tue, 02 Oct 2018 21:34:41 +0000

Due to overwhelming demand for tickets to the Linux Plumbers Conference, there are no additional registrations available at this time.

As we finalize the makeup of microconferences, refereed talks, and so on, there will be some spots available. We will be making them available to those who have expressed interest as fairly as we can and as soon as we can. We plan to contact the recipients of the first batch of released slots by October 8. There may be another, likely smaller, batch notified thereafter.

Those interested in attending the conference, should send a request to contact@linuxplumbersconf.org to get on the waiting list. In the unlikely event that the waiting list has been exhausted, we will release any remaining registrations on a first-come-first-served basis by mid-late October.

LPC [1] will be held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada from Tuesday, November 13 through Thursday, November 15.

[1] https://linuxplumbersconf.org/

CLANG/GCC/GLIBC Toolchain Microconference Accepted into 2018 Linux Plumbers Conference

Paul McKenney — Tue, 02 Oct 2018 03:46:39 +0000

The interaction between toolschain components such as GCC, GLIBC, and CLANG/LLVM with the Linux kernel and with underlying hardware has evolved rapidly. The corresponding communities continue to push on the limits of what is possible, due to new silicon as well as the performance and security changes of the past year.

Specific topics include support for control-flow enforcement technologies (CET), loop-nest optimization flag changes, optimized x86_64 math functions, unified API for new ports, emulation fallback for system calls, handling deprecated kernel support (such as PowerPC HTM support), building the Linux kernel with CLANG, and ARMv8.5 features.

If you would like to contribute to this discussion, please feel free to contact Victor Rodriguez (vm.rod25atgmail.com), H.J. Lu (hjl.toolsatgmail.com), Adhemerval Zanella (adhemerval.zanellaatlinaro.org), David Edelsohn (dje.gccatgmail.com), or Siddhesh Poyarekar (siddheshatgotplt.org).

We hope to see you there!

Regular Registration Quota Reached

Elena Zannoni — Tue, 25 Sep 2018 20:52:55 +0000

Thank you all for the extremely strong interest in participation to the 2018 Linux Plumbers Conference this year.

At this point, all of the regular registration slots for LPC 2018 have sold out.

There will be a very limited number of registrations available on a first come first serve basis going forward.

Those interested in attending the conference, should send a request to contact@linuxplumbersconf.org to get on the waiting list.

We will process people as quickly as possible as slots initially allocated to sponsors, microconferences and speakers get released.

Thermal Microconference Accepted into 2018 Linux Plumbers Conference

Paul McKenney — Thu, 20 Sep 2018 16:55:08 +0000

As the energy density of computer systems has increased, thermal issues have become an increasingly hot topic across the spectrum from hand-held systems to internet datacenters. Because the need for thermal management is relatively new, there is a wide variety of hardware and firmware mechanisms, to say nothing of a wide variety of independently developed software to interact with these mechanisms. This in turn results in complex and almost-duplicate code to manage and control thermal excursions. This microconference will therefore look to see if it is possible to consolidate or at least to better align the Linux kernel’s thermal subsystems.

This microconference will therefore discuss better handling of low ambient temperatures, userspace thermal control, improvements to thermal zone mode, better support for indirect (virtual) temperature measurement, sensor hierarchy, scheduler interactions with thermal management, and improvements to idle injection as a way to cool a core.

If you are hacking on thermal related topics and would like to contribute in the discussion, feel free to contact Eduardo Valentin (edubezval@gmail.com) or Amit Kucheria (amit.kucheria@gmail.com).

Please join us for an interesting and important discussion!

RISC-V microconference accepted for Linux Plumbers Conference

Jake Edge — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 16:16:15 +0000

The open nature of the RISC-V ecosystem has allowed contributions from both academia and industry to lead to an unprecedented number of new hardware design proposals in a very short time span. Linux support is the key to enabling these new hardware options.

The primary objective of the RISC-V microconference at Plumbers is to initiate a community-wide discussion about the design problems/ideas for different Linux kernel features that will lead to a better, stable kernel for RISC-V.

Topics for this microconference include:

The State of RISC-V Software
Multi-level interrupt design in RISC-V
Power Management in RISC-V
RISC-V Platform Specification Kick-Off
RISC-V Hypervisor Spec – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Experiences from Andes Technology

If you’re interested in participating in this microconference or have other topics to propose, please contact Palmer Dabbelt (palmer@sifive.com) or Atish Patra (atish.patra@wdc.com).

LPC will be held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada from Tuesday, November 13 through Thursday, November 15.

We hope to see you there!

Looking forward to the Kernel Summit at LPC 2018

Elena Zannoni — Tue, 11 Sep 2018 20:20:33 +0000

The LPC 2018 program committee would like to reiterate that the Kernel Summit is going ahead as planned as a track within the Linux Plumbers Conference in Vancouver, BC, November 13th through 15th. However, the Maintainers Summit half day, which is by invitation only, has been rescheduled to be colocated with OSS Europe in Edinburgh, Scotland on October 22nd. Attendees of the Maintainers Summit, once known, will still receive free passes to LPC and thus will probably be present in Vancouver as well.

Also a reminder that the CFP for the Kernel Summit is still open until September 21st 2018: to submit a discussion topic, please use a separate email for each topic with each subject line tagged with [TECH TOPIC], and send these emails to: ksummit-discuss@lists.linuxfoundation.org

Looking forward to seeing you all in Vancouver!

Tech Topics for Kernel Summit

Paul McKenney — Tue, 11 Sep 2018 16:40:58 +0000

If you missed the refereed-track deadline and you have a kernel-related topic (or, for that matter, if you just now thought of a kernel-related topic), please consider submitting it for the Kernel Summit. To do this, please use a separate email for each topic with each subject line tagged with [TECH TOPIC], and send these emails to:

ksummit-discuss@lists.linuxfoundation.org

If you submit your topic suggestions before September 21st, and if one of your suggestions is accepted, then you will be given free admission to the Linux Plumbers Conference.