Microsoft, Facebook, Netflix, Google and its start up Isolvalent have united to launch the eBPF Foundation, designed to motivate ‘revolutionary’ technology that will implement observability, security and networking functionality.
eBPF ((extended Berkeley Packet Filter) is a technology with origins in the Linux kernel that can run sandboxed programs in an operating system kernel without having to change any load modules and open source codes.
Programmable
By making the OS kernel programmable, infrastructure software can leverage existing layers, making them more intelligent, scalable and without continuing to add additional layers of complexity to the system.
While it is actually hard to evolve an operating system kernel, the rate of innovation at this level has been lower to functionality implemented outside of the system. The eBPF is said to change this mechanism fundamentally, by permitting to run sandboxed programs with the operating system. Application developers can run eBPF programs to add additional capabilities to the operating system at runtime.
The operating system then guarantees safety and execution efficiency, the company noted. It allows users to even combine and apply logic across multiple subsystems which were traditionally completely independent.
The eBPF Foundation said it will expand the significant level of contributions being made to extend the powerful capabilities of eBPF and grow beyond Linux. It is expected to be the home for open source eBPF projects and technologies to drive the growth and adoption of the eBPF ecosystem.
The eBPF Foundation will be hosted by the Linux Foundation, the not-for-profit consortium dedicated to support its commercial growth and other open source technologies. This comes in advance of the eBPF Summit, a free and virtual event on August 18-19, 2021.
