VM management does not run on the FPGA; it’s regular Win32 software on Windows, with aspirations to run some equivalent, someday, on the SoC next to the FPGA on the NIC. The programmable hardware is used for network paths and PCIe functions, where it can project NICs and NVMe devices to VMs to bypass software-based, VMBus-backed virtual devices, all of which end up being serviced on the host who controls the real hardware. Lookup SR-IOV for the bypass. So yes, that’s I/O bypass/offload, but the VM management stack offload is a distinct thing that does not require an FPGA, just a SoC.

“customary” referred to the path through the Secretary, as opposed to writing directly to members. Besides that, depending on the nature of the communication, if everything fails, you may need to be sure you talk to people who will unconditionally put the best interests of the company ahead of any other consideration. The Board is one such group. See what Boeing did with the report of the mechanic who saw flaws in the 737 MAX’s door plugs. Was that worthy of a letter to the CEO, then the Board if no reaction? Or just talk to your dismissive manager and let the planes crash? I made a judgment call, which I entirely own.

“customary” referred to the path through the Secretary, as opposed to writing to individual members. I added a clarification at the bottom of the page.

There is a video floating where he demoed Excel, and his title was Technical Marketing Manager. Maybe he pivoted to PM later?

https://youtu.be/ddHDclRfzxM

Base education, he’s an EE.

The timeline and facts were quite different. Debating an org-wide quality issue on a 100+ member team's alias is not whistleblowing.

The thing with cockroaches is that if even a single one is seen in the dining room and someone calls environmental health, regardless of the restaurant's prestige, they close it with immediate effect until they get their act together and a food sanitation inspection clears them.

At the end, everyone feels better, in particular the customers.

Maybe they didn’t have sufficient visibility at the ground level to make proper decisions.

You have all the right words but some are in the wrong order.

Life works in mysterious ways. Whoever you are, bring it on and prove any of my points wrong.

Like the one where 1.5T in value went pfoof due to reasons you mentioned? I will let people judge whether your arguments are most likely, or whether this is bubble syndrome. Hint: there is a large distance between use of smart pointers and market effects.

Hint: there is a small distance, almost zero, between your product being unreliable and losing your most flagship customer and the trust of the DoD.

Factor that there are limits to what I was willing to share in that story, limits that I’ll certainly not cross here.

Now, if you think that I’m wrong and that Microsoft found an entirely different way of shooting itself in the foot, I’d love to hear your perspective.

It came from the top of Azure and for Azure only. Specifically the mandate was for all new code that cannot use a GC i.e. no more new C or C++ specifically.

I think the CTO was very public about that at RustCon and other places where he spoke.

The examples he gave were contrived, though, mostly tiny bits of old GDI code rewritten in Rust as success stories to justify his mandate. Not convincing at all.

Azure node software can be written in Rust, C, or C++ it really does not matter.

What matters is who writes it as it should be seen as “OS-level” code requiring the same focus as actual OS code given the criticality, therefore should probably be made by the Core OS folks themselves.

I have followed it from the outside, including talks at Rust Nation.

However the reality you described on the ground is quite different from e.g. Rust Nation UK 2025 talks, or those being done by Victor Ciura.

It seems more in line with the rejections that took place against previous efforts regarding Singularity, Midori, Phoenix compiler toolchain, Longhorn,.... only to be redone with WinRT and COM, in C++ naturally.

Because neither C nor C++ creates friction.

The whole memory safety chapter is a human problem first and foremost.

Some humans haven’t written a memory-safety bug in decades, but it requires a discipline the recent hire never acquired.

I always advocated fixing issues at their root. Humans write bugs, fix the humans. Somehow this was always regarded as taboo ever since I started at Microsoft in 2013.

May I ask, what kind of training does the new joins of the kernel team (or any team that effectively writes kernel level code) get? Especially if they haven't written kernel code professionally -- or do they ONLY hire people who has written non-trivial amount of kernel code?

There is no formal training (like bootcamp or classes) but the larger org has extensive documentation (osgwiki) and you are expected to learn and ramp-up by yourself.

I don’t think there is any kernel code writing experience requirement but the hiring bar is sky-high, you have to demonstrate that you are a programmer.