KubeCon Europe: WebAssembly, eBPF Are Huge for Cloud Native

PARIS — WebAssembly and eBPF were significant topics of interest at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe here. This attention stemmed from their position as technologies shaping the future of cloud native computing, as the technologies played a predominant theme during KubeCon talks and in the Xsphere. But data analysis aside, WebAssembly (Wasm) and eBPF are increasingly integrated into below-the-hood workings of cloud native infrastructure, along with the explosion of AI (more about that below).

“There was much excitement at KubeCon, especially, about WebAssembly as both Fermyon and Cosmonic were showing actual large-scale use cases. Fermyon’s launch of WebAssembly on Kubernetes shows that Wasm is ready for a number of production use cases,” Torsten Volk, an analyst for Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), told The New Stack. “We have come a long way since KubeCon 2022 in Detroit where server-side Wasm was still at the embryo stage.

According to statistics from EMA and Volk, both WebAssembly and eBPF stood out prominently. The charts below are based on the same 12,000 Tweets (posts on X, formerly known as Twitter) from March 3 until March 23 and on all 493 session descriptions from the official KubeCon schedule. They show the prominent character of both eBPF and Wasm on X and in the official schedule, sorted by frequency on X (top) and sorted by frequency in the schedule (bottom):

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Tracing WebAssembly’s and eBPF’s evolution, Davanum Srinivas, a technical oversight committee member for the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) and a principal engineer for Amazon Web Services (AWS), said during the keynote “Cloud Native in its Next Decade” how in 2021, “eBPF came up and Cilium and a bunch of other things as well” before Wasm “made its appearance” in 2022.

Cool but unsurprising to see #webassembly & #ebpf will continue to be huge. @KubeCon_ #Keynote: Cloud Native in its Next Decade – @awscloud ´s Davanum Srinivas & @soloio_inc ´s Lin Sun, Head of Open Source, https://t.co/VKAxWqk5KJ @KubeCon_ @thenewstack pic.twitter.com/gzydLylfad

— BC Gain (@bcamerongain) March 22, 2024

Lin Sun, a member of the Istio technical oversight committee and senior director of open source for solo.io noted the role WebAssembly is expected to play in AI. During her keynote with Srinivas, Sun noted how CNCF CTO Chris Aniszczyk is “always looking ahead,” citing how Aniszczyk has predicted how Wasm combined with CNCF projects “will become the best runtime for AI and LLMs.”

Not Everything AI

AI is expected to revolutionize DevOps and software development and consumption and was one of the main elephants in the room at KubeCon. From the opening keynote to many sessions and events throughout the conference, “AI was everywhere,” Volk said. Priyanka Sharma, the executive director of CNCF, talked about the role Kubernetes will play as the universal platform for deploying and running LLMs, Microsoft announced enhancements that enable Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) to run LLMs more efficiently and Intel unveiled their managed Kubernetes service for AI/ML training and inference, Volk noted. “These are just a few examples of the massive potential business impact the integration between scalable cloud native infrastructure and LLMs could have in the not-so-far future,” Volk said. “This is all quite exciting.”

However, as we are still in the nascent stages of AI and DevOps and platform engineering teams are still determining how they will use AI, and in particular, LLMs, focusing on novel capabilities rather than just AI is still appropriate.

Users prioritize functionality over the underlying technology, whether it’s AI, WebAssembly, or eBPF.  This sentiment was echoed by the creator of eBPF project Cilium, underscoring the inevitable impact of AI, Thomas Graf, CTO and co-founder at Isovalent and founder of the Cilium project, said during his keynote talk The Cilium Vision.

Referring to AI networking and AI in general in IT, Graf said: “I don’t even know what that could look like, so let’s forget about that part for now. But let’s keep AI around.”

However, “The mission in 2017 for Cilium was straightforward: Bring the eBPF to Kubernetes and become the best possible CNI. That was essentially the mission and the vision, and we’re still driving towards that,” Graf said. “Let’s extend it a little bit, because we want to bring Cilium essentially to the rest of the world as well. With its simplicity, scale, security and not requiring a dozen different tools, we want to bring that outside of Kubernetes for your VMs, servers, edge and multicloud connectivity.”

@fermyontech ´s @matei_radu w/@ralph_squillace and @technosophos showing a packed room the very lightweight aspects of #webassembly on @kubernetesio v. containers at @KubeCon_ . @thenewstack pic.twitter.com/fylL4Pcyn2

— BC Gain (@bcamerongain) March 21, 2024

As AI permeates the IT landscape, eBPF and WebAssembly are increasingly becoming foundational components, albeit often operating unnoticed underneath the hood. Radu Matei, chief technology officer at Fermyon Technologies, explained and demoed how SpinKube can be used to deploy apps on Kubernetes with lightweight WebAssembly modules, compared to larger containers, which as was noted, is especially useful for deploying and running distributed AI applications. Fermyon’s CEO Matt Butcher, Fermyon principal software engineer Michelle Dhanani, and Ralph Squillace, a principal program manager for Microsoft, Azure Core Upstream, joined Matei during his talk “Leveling up Wasm Support in Kubernetes.” WebAssembly’s future on Kubernetes and proxying options to scale WebAssembly workloads “from zero to thousands and back again in an instant” were also discussed during the talk.

All Connected

Observability and security are intricately linked with eBPF, as evidenced by discussions around OpenTelemetry and security. Various tool providers and projects, including Kubescape, Falco and Calico, are leveraging eBPF for enhanced functionality for security. As eBPF becomes a standard feature across infrastructure, its seamless integration from the kernel ensures its efficacy.

Kubernetes SIG Node: Intro and Deep Dive – @armosec’s Matthias Bertschy on the future direction with @Google’s Dixita Narang & Dawn Chen, and @RedHat’s Peter Hunt on the future of SIG Node, which is the « center of everything » @kubernetesio. @CloudNativeFdn @thenewstack pic.twitter.com/tONeObhR6w

— BC Gain (@bcamerongain) March 22, 2024

The collaborative nature of the open source community is exemplified by individuals like Matthias Bertschy, a senior Kubernetes developer for Kubernetes security platform provider ARMO, who is deeply involved in both eBPF development and Kubernetes SIG groups. So, while Bertschy, helps develop eBPF functionality as it relates to security for ARMO’s security platform and is a contributor to ARMO’s Kubescape open source security tool, Bertschy is also a long-time contributor to Kubernetes and is a member of SIG Node. His dedication underscores the interconnectedness of eBPF, security and Kubernetes functionality, emphasizing their mutual advancement within the ecosystem. During his talk Kubernetes SIG Node Intro and Deep Dive with Dixita Narang, a software engineer, and Dawn Chen principal software engineer — both of Google — and Red Hat software engineer Peter Hunt, Bertschy said that while Kubernetes is highly interconnected “the node is the center of everything.”

In other words, WebAssembly, eBPF and AI are already largely connected to Kubernetes and their interconnectivity should only increase in the future.

Disclosure: B. Cameron Gain is the founder and owner of ReveCom Media Inc., which has offered consulting services for ARMO.