Fungible DPU shared core services module
A shared support module for Fungible's data processing unit (DPU) PCIe accelerator cards, which exposed multiple PCI functions for networking and storage offload. The cards were sold to hyperscale and enterprise datacenter customers around 2021–2022 before Microsoft acquired Fungible in early 2023.
recommendation
Worth keeping but the niche should be documented, because Fungible was acquired by Microsoft in January 2023 and the cards are no longer broadly sold, leaving only a tiny installed base behind PCI IDs 1dad:0101 and 1dad:0181. Upstream is still touching the code with minor cleanups as recently as late 2024, so it is being maintained rather than abandoned, but a note flagging the hardware as effectively end-of-life would help future cleanup decisions.
repository signals
sources
- mail.openwall.com
Initial upstream posting for funcore describes it as the common service module for Fungible cards and notes the cards expose multiple PCI functions.
- lists.openwall.net
Late-2024 mailing-list traffic for net/fungible is a small cleanup patch, indicating maintenance activity rather than removal work.
- cateee.net
CONFIG_FUN_CORE continues to exist in current kernel series and builds the funcore module.
- cateee.net
The sibling production driver supports only Fungible PCI IDs 1dad:0101 and 1dad:0181, showing this code serves a very narrow hardware family.
- blogs.microsoft.com
Microsoft acquired Fungible in January 2023 and positioned the technology for datacenter infrastructure work, which argues against broad ongoing commercial card sales under the Fungible brand.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Real driver directory: local shell inspection found MODULE_DESCRIPTION("Core services driver for Fungible devices") and obj-$(CONFIG_FUN_CORE) in Makefile. Local git log shows non-mechanical touches through 2024-11-16, so it is not abandoned; searched lore/openwall first via web because lore MCP/lei were unavailable, and found only maintenance traffic, no removal series. turn2 web search produced the 2022 netdev patch URL; turn3/turn6/turn9 web search/open/find yielded the 2024 openwall patch URL; turn5 web search yielded LKDDb FUN_CORE/FUN_ETH pages; turn4/turn7 web search/open yielded Microsoft's acquisition post. Conclusion: hardware appears niche and likely no longer broadly sold after the 2023 acquisition, but upstream still carries and lightly maintains it, so keep the driver with an obsolescence annotation rather than deprecate/remove.