Overview

Innovation at the Speed of Hardware: Accelerated Infrastructure Enablement (AIE) SIG

The Accelerated Infrastructure Enablement (AIE) Special Interest Group (SIG) is engineered as the high-velocity development path bridging rapid hardware innovation with the stable, community-driven foundation of the CentOS Stream ecosystem.

Beginning its development on CentOS Stream 10, the SIG provides a "fast lane" for integrating "in-flight" upstream patches and contributions, particularly from partners like NVIDIA. This allows the community to ingest and validate new code the moment it is publicly available—often months before full upstream acceptance—which is critical for matching the rapid development cadence of next-generation hardware. This collective effort lays the foundational software stack for the AI Factory with NVIDIA, ensuring the community is prepared the moment new hardware is released.

Strategic Principles * The Off-Ramp is Mandatory: The goal is to build the next stable state of CentOS Stream, not a permanent fork. Every feature and patch integrated here includes a mandatory "off-ramp" strategy to eventually merge back into standard, stable CentOS Stream. This ensures the continuous flow of innovation into the core of the Enterprise Linux ecosystem. * Match the Speed of Light: We eliminate historical friction caused by hardware release gaps by ingesting patches immediately upon public release and testing. The objective is "Day 0" readiness for rack-scale AI infrastructure within the CentOS community. * Development in the Sunlight: All work is conducted publicly and transparently within the CentOS Stream ecosystem. This maintains community credibility and accelerates upstream acceptance by making cutting-edge code visible and testable sooner. * Surgical Precision: To minimize maintenance burden and the "blast radius" of changes, the SIG focuses strictly on the core components necessary to "light up" the hardware.

Scope & MethodologyTechnical Scope The SIG maintains a rigorous focus on the core plumbing required for accelerated computing and "AI Factory" deployments:

  • Linux Kernel: Optimized for ARM64
  • Virtualization: Cutting-edge QEMU and libvirt integration.
  • Advanced Networking: Enablement for ConnectX-8/9 (CX9), BlueField-4, and Spectrum-X drivers to support multi-node LLM training and inference.

Delivery Methodology The SIG promotes a modern, community-driven management vision for infrastructure:

  • Image Mode (bootc): This is the preferred delivery vehicle, providing the flexibility and atomicity required to manage fast-moving content and new features. While we are actively collaborating with partners to transition from traditional RPM-based workflows, Image Mode remains our primary strategic direction for content delivery.
  • OpenShift: Integration for containerized and virtualized workloads (OpenShift Virtualization) on accelerated hardware.
  • Community AI: Delivers an out-of-the box experience for distributed inferencing at scale and simplifies the delivery of agentic AI for production use.

The AIE SIG is a tactical tool for speed and upstream enablement. It provides the mechanism for partners and the community to deliver early access to out-of-tree hardware enablement in the Enterprise Linux ecosystem. As features become stable and accepted in-tree, they will be merged into the mainline CentOS Stream builds, thereby feeding the next stable release.

Deliverables * Current Repositories: Active builds for the Kernel, QEMU, and libvirt based on CentOS Stream 10. * Target Platforms: Primary enablement targets are the NVL72 rack-scale systems (Grace Blackwell GB200) and the upcoming Vera Rubin platform. The SIG uses Grace-Hopper as its current testing and demo baseline. * Future Roadmap: Intent to provide ISOs and disk images for streamlined deployment of "Day 0" stacks.

Governance & Participation

Leadership

Role Individual
SIG Chair Amnon Ilan
Board Sponsor Amy Marrich

The SIG operates in close coordination with the wider CentOS Stream community and project leads to ensure technical alignment with the roadmap.

How to Participate

The Accelerated Infrastructure Enablement SIG is the public forum for collaboration between hardware partners, cloud providers, and the CentOS community. While initial architectural discussions may occur within partner workstreams, the SIG is where the code is integrated and validated.

Contributors and partners are encouraged to participate via the CentOS Stream Project on GitLab. Your feedback on "in-flight" patches is critical to accelerating the journey to the main RHEL "highway."

Resources