[openib-general] OpenIB and OpenRDMA: Convergence on common RDMAAPIs and ULPs for Linux

[Talpey, Thomas]

At 11:49 AM 5/26/2005, Bob Woodruff wrote:
>Finally, until there is some consensus about allowing TCP offload in Linux, 
>I see no need to start to hack up the InfiniBand stack to support iWarp. 

It is not a requirement that TCP offload be supported in order to
support iWARP. Upper layers which don't perform an rdma-upgrade
(e.g. NFSv3/RDMA) don't even care about "speaking sockets". And
I believe a Connection Manager can and should address this for the
ones that do. Tying iWARP to the TOE albatross furthers nothing.

I completely agree with your other point that a lower-layer cut-in
is preferable to another top-layer API. We already have APIs which
provide transport-independent RDMA services to existing upper
layers (such as NFS/RDMA and iSER, coded in fact to kDAPL).
Do we have solid justification to add more? NFS/RDMA says "no".

Tom.