We are pleased to announce that Chris Sommers, Keysight Technologies, was nominated in April 2023 to co-chair of the P4 API Working Group.
Chris Sommers has a degree in Electrical Engineering and is a Distinguished Software Engineer at Keysight Technologies, where he incubates new technologies and products related to network test and visibility. Chris has been an active contributor since 2018 in several P4.org working groups, including the Language Design and API Working Groups. He helped draft the initial P4Runtime Specification and made contributions to the P4-16 language specification. Chris was an enthusiastic early adopter of P4 and helped conceive several P4-powered products at Keysight, including a Tofino-powered “packet blaster.” This won Interop Best in Show Grand Prix and is being utilized by cloud-scale customers.
Chris also co-chairs the Test Working Group of the SONiC-DASH community project, where he helped create a test framework for the P4 behavioral model of the DASH data plane.
In his spare time, Chris plays guitar and runs a cattle and sheep ranch with his wife in the foothills of Northern California.
A special thanks to Antonin Bas,VMware, who has stepped down from the role of co-chair of the P4 API Working Group.