2nd Workshop on eBPF and Kernel Extensions

Program

Call for Papers

eBPF (extended Berkeley Packet Filter) is an innovative technology that has been gaining popularity in the networking and operating system community for its flexibility, safety, and efficiency in programming end-host network and OS stacks. Despite the numerous advantages of eBPF, there are several research challenges in leveraging it for novel use cases. These challenges include the difficulty in integrating eBPF into current systems, the potential performance overhead when executed in the kernel, limitations of existing programming hooks and APIs, and the programming restrictions and challenges imposed by the need for safety as enforced by the eBPF verifier. To tackle these issues, a cross-disciplinary approach is necessary, combining techniques across network protocol design, programming languages, operating systems, compilers, hardware architecture, and formal verification.

The workshop aims to bring together experts and practitioners in the field of eBPF, end-host networking, and operating systems to discuss and present the latest advances to support and apply this cutting edge technology. Submissions may show the benefits that eBPF can bring to real-world systems, explore mechanisms to improve or re-design existing eBPF mechanisms, examine the security implications of end-host programmability, or present measurement studies that reveal new and interesting directions for this ecosystem. We are looking for novel and previously unpublished ideas, systems, and measurements that address key issues and challenges in this growing area, position papers that outline directions for the research community, as well as preliminary papers from ongoing projects that could benefit from early community feedback.

Topics of Interest

We welcome submissions including, but not limited to the following topics:

• eBPF program development and deployment
• Better approaches to eBPF program safety verification
• eBPF in network performance analysis and optimization
• eBPF in security and threat management
• Previously unexplored, under-explored, and emerging use cases of eBPF
• Techniques to optimize eBPF programs, for example static or dynamic optimizations
• eBPF-based approaches for improving application efficiency
• Simplifying eBPF programming
• End-to-end network communication optimization using eBPF
• Interaction between eBPF and end-host networking
• eBPF use cases in high-performance networking
• eBPF-based approaches to CPU scheduling
• Security implications and innovations for end-host programmability using eBPF
• Usage of hardware security or performance features to benefit eBPF
• Approaches to improving the in-kernel JIT compiler for eBPF
• Quantitative measurements or comparisons of eBPF to other programmable data plane technologies
• Limitations of the eBPF verifier and approaches to overcome them
• Approaches to scaling eBPF programs in large-scale distributed systems
• Case studies and real-world deployments of eBPF and end-host networking
• Future directions and challenges in eBPF and end-host networking
• Techniques for software or hardware fault isolation in eBPF or related systems

Submission Instructions

The 2nd workshop on eBPF and kernel extensions solicits submissions. We are looking for two-types of submissions:

• Research papers of up to 6 pages, including all figures, tables and appendices. Submissions must be original, unpublished work, that have not been concurrently submitted to other venues. Workshop papers will appear in ACM DL as a part of the official proceedings, and are thus considered published work.
• Extended abstracts, which are 2 pages in length (excluded references) submitted in the same format as the workshop papers. We‘re particularly interested in early-stage findings, position papers and works that are still in progress. This segment is designed for authors to showcase their preliminary or emerging ideas in a concise, impactful manner, and get early-stage feedback at the workshop. As such, these authors will be given the opportunity to present their work in the form of a lighting talk during the workshop.

Both types of papers can use as many additional pages as necessary for citations, and should be written using the two-column 10pt ACM sigconf format (https://github.com/scyue/latex-sigcomm18). All submissions are double-blind. The program committee will review papers to determine relevance to the workshop, quality, and on the likelihood that it will elicit discussion among the attendees. At least one author from each accepted submission must attend the workshop to present and discuss their work.

Please submit your paper via https://ebpf24.hotcrp.com/

If you have any questions or problems with your submission, please get in touch with Sebastiano Miano (sebastiano.miano@polimi.it) or Srinivas Narayana Ganapathy (sn624@cs.rutgers.edu).

• Submissions deadline

  May 25, 2024 (Updated)
• Acceptance notification

  Jun 9, 2024
• Camera-ready deadline

  Jun 14, 2024
• Workshop

  Aug 4, 2024

Organizers