FOSDEM 2024 - Call For Participation :
Confidential computing devroom
Sunday, February 4, 1-5pm
Fully physical in Brussels, Belgium

Submission deadline: December 1 2023

FOSDEM dates: February 3 & 4 2024

About FOSDEM

FOSDEM is a free event for software developers to meet, share ideas and collaborate. Every year, thousands of developers of free and open source software from all over the world gather at the event in Brussels. FOSDEM is free to attend. There is no registration.

Devroom overview and objectives

Following the success of the last years’ editions, we are for the 5th time organizing a devroom devoted to the emerging open source ecosystem around hardware-based Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) which nowadays is also known under the term Confidential computing (CC).

Confidential computing leverages hardware-based Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) in order to protect and secure data in-use. This devroom is devoted to this emerging free and open-source ecosystem around TEEs that allow to directly isolate and attest trusted “enclave” software components running on top of a potentially compromised operating system. Over the last years, all major processor vendors have developed some form of TEE support, e.g., Intel’s Software Guard Extensions (SGX) and Trust Domain Extensions (TDX), ARM’s TrustZone, Morello, and confidential computing Architecture (CCA), AMD’s Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV) and SEV-ES/SEV-SNP extensions, and IBM’s Z and Protected Execution Facility (PEF).

Hence, with today’s mainstream consumer hardware being increasingly shipped with these advanced trusted computing technologies, this devroom wants to foster discussion on the much-needed free and open-source TEE ecosystem amongst industry players, academics, enthusiasts, hobbyists, and project maintainers.

Desirable topics

The devroom’s topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • Open-source confidential computing:
    • An introduction to the existing solutions and the use cases they cover, etc
  • Programming frameworks for TEEs: how to develop free and open-source software that can run inside enclaves (e.g., library OSs, SDKs, Linux kernel support, etc.).
  • Confidential computing deployment: Challenges and benefits.
  • Use cases and applications on top of TEEs such as applying confidential computing to the Cloud Native space.
  • Compiler and language support for emerging trusted hardware extensions.
  • Open-source enclave processor designs (e.g., RISC-V TEEs).
  • Attestation, also across different technologies
  • Existing technologies:
    • What do they have in common, how do they differ?
    • Which confidential computing use cases can they cover?
  • Upcoming technologies:
    • TEEs on accelerators (GPUs, NPUs, DPUs, etc)
    • Interaction between existing and upcoming technologies
    • Opportunities
  • Vision: future TEEs (what is missed, proposals, wishes, discussions).
  • TEE-specific attacks and defenses: reverse engineering, side-channels, vulnerabilities, exploits.

This year’s changes

In 2024, we will fully resume to a physical-only devroom.

Key dates

  • Submission deadline: 01 December 2023
  • Announcement of selected talks: 12 December 2023
  • FOSDEM dates 3 & 4 February 2024
  • Confidential computing devroom date: February 4, 2024, 1pm-5pm

Submit a talk proposal

Submissions are required to proceed through the new and updated FOSDEM 2024 system. This will delight everyone who has had to work with the old system in the past.

Your submission must include the following information:

  • Proposal title of your talk: please be descriptive, as the audience will have to choose to attend your talk out of a listing with ~500 talks from other projects at FOSDEM.
  • Select “Confidential computing devroom” as the track.
  • A longer description if you wish to do so.
  • A short abstract of one paragraph.
  • Submission notes to let us know of specifics to your talk.
  • Additional speakers if you want to add them.
  • FOSDEM requires you to fill in which open-source license you use and to provide links to your source code. All talks at FOSDEM must be about free and open-source software, so please make it clear to the organizers by providing a public URL to the source code of the relevant project(s).In case the URL is not yet public, please indicate so and explicitly clarify your commitment to have the code available the latest at the time of the devroom.
  • Information about yourself.
  • Please note that we do not allow remote speakers this year anymore. All speakers need to be at FOSDEM in-person.

We target a block of 20-40 minutes per talk (including Q&A) and we will inform you about the final length of your talks when confirming the proposals.

If you wish to only give a short talk, you can let us know in the submission notes. We leave the option open to have several 10 minute talks for rapid-fire ideas and discussion points. Let us know in the submission notes if you plan your submission to be more interactive so that we can plan in more time for discussion after your talk.

Contact and organizers

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to Fritz Alder (fritz.alder.work@gmail.com) or to any of the below co-organizers.