[openib-general] IB Address Translation service

[Paul Baxter]

>    Roland> First, let's understand the problem we're trying to solve.
>    Roland> Who are the consumers of this address translation service?
>
>    shaharf> Any ULPs at user & kernel, and also some
>    shaharf> applications.
>
> I think this is too general an answer.  We should be designing based
> on specific ULPs and applications.  For example, I don't see anything
> particularly useful to IPoIB in this API.  Perhaps Libor can comment
> on how this API works for SDP.
>

Recently a project I've been working on has been looking at porting IB 
software to an embedded PowerPC though my question also applies to a slimmed 
down embedded Linux PC system.

If I wanted to support SDP over a link with one end being embedded, I had 
thought I'd need to port the whole of the IPoIB driver for address 
resolution (albeit I may be able to cut a few corners with the code.)

Would this proposed address translation layer interface provide a sufficient 
subset of IPoIB functionality that allowed an SDP implementation to exist 
without a larger, full-featured IPoIB implementation?

If so, it sounds like a useful decoupling (refactoring) of a more generally 
useful subset of the IPoIB driver. It wouldn't be of use for the IPoIB 
driver per se, but would be more modular and suited to other applications 
particularly slimmed down ones. (Perhaps finding a place in Linux 'on a 
bios' for network booting or slimmed down embedded processing nodes.)

Having now just read Yaron's reply, I am even more convinced that this is 
the right way to go albeit I can't comment on the API etc (Could someone 
explain the differences in using ARP and ATS. )

Paul

PS As is probably evident from the above, I didn't look into the technical 
detail of the existing code.