The Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) project today announced the availability of its DPDK 18.05 software release. It’s the project’s fifth major release since joining the Linux Foundation in April 2017.

DPDK accelerates packet processing workloads running on a variety of CPU architectures, including x86, ARM, and Power. DPDK also supports enhancements for packet processing, compression, and encryption.

The latest DPDK release is more accommodating for containers in that it can latch onto and release memory into the system.

“From a container perspective, we’re starting to put functions in place for dynamic control of DPDK including better memory management,” said Edwin Verplanke, principal engineer with Intel’s network platforms group. “We can hot-add and hot-remove memory from the subsystem."

As far as changes in the packet processing landscape in the past year, Jim St. Leger, the board chair for DPDK and a software product line manager at Intel, said “the usual suspect is the continuing tick-up of throughput requirements. That rapid increase is faster than it has been.”

Leger said in the past year, the community has also seen a greater need for cryptography support. Hence, the release includes new crypto features.

The DPDK group says by enabling very fast packet processing it makes it possible for organizations to move performance-sensitive applications – like the backbone for mobile networks – to the cloud and to help create higher performing edge devices.

The DPDK project named its latest release “Venky” after Venky Venkatesan, who was known as “the father of DPDK” and who recently passed away.