[ewg] Panel at SC08/Austin -- what can we do about this?

[Ryan, Jim]

This continues to be an extremely interesting and potentially helpful thread. Thanks very much for your comment. There's a meeting of the EWG later this morning and I'll raise this as a discussion topic there.

I'm hoping this turns out to be a small amount of important, focused work rather than a large project, but I don't know that yet. Because I'm want this to be addressed correctly, I'm keeping the MWG looped in case any of this spills over into their domain

Thanks again, Jim

________________________________
From: ewg-bounces at lists.openfabrics.org [mailto:ewg-bounces at lists.openfabrics.org] On Behalf Of John Russo
Sent: Monday, November 24, 2008 4:12 AM
To: ewg at lists.openfabrics.org; mwg at lists.openfabris.org
Subject: Re: [ewg] Panel at SC08/Austin -- what can we do about this?

This may be a small part of a larger issue.

As the Open Fabrics products gain a larger customer base, we cannot assume that all users will be actively following the mailing lists.  A detailed Users Guide which covers issues such as installation as well as the features and use of each ULP is necessary forthose who are not intimately familiar with the OFED/WinOF offerings.

In addition, there is currently no documentation that informs anyone of changes between releases of OFED/WinOF.  Even those who are working to test release candidates do not have enough information as to what has changed between builds.

In order to build a legitimate set of user documentation, there needs to be a more formal process for developers to document changes, enhancements and bug fixes that are added to a release.  This does not have to be a major burden on the developers; a few comments in a pre-determined README file would go a long way to improving communication of changes to the product. This would ensure that the community adequately tests updates to the products and that end-users would have the information they need to get the most out of it.

Just my 2-cents.

________________________________
From: ewg-bounces at lists.openfabrics.org [mailto:ewg-bounces at lists.openfabrics.org] On Behalf Of Ryan, Jim
Sent: Saturday, November 22, 2008 5:41 PM
To: Hebenstreit, Michael; ewg at lists.openfabrics.org; mwg at lists.openfabrics.org; bboas at systemfabricworks.com
Subject: [ewg] RE: Panel at SC08/Austin -- what can we do about this?

I'm not completely clear about the genesis of the email below and the points that were made, but I thought this was extremely interesting. Maybe I'm unreasonably impressed because I got similar questions from people stopping by the OpenFabrics booth at SC'08. Just, as one example, a professor at The University of Tokyo asked for a "programming manual", which I understood to mean a how-to-get-started document for implementing high-performance networks

I'm copying the Marketing Working Group of OFA and will do so further to see if there's someone who can act on these concerns. I think ignorance of basics is a major challenge for OFA to address for broader acceptance of the interconnects we support

Thanks, Jim Ryan

________________________________
From: ewg-bounces at lists.openfabrics.org [mailto:ewg-bounces at lists.openfabrics.org] On Behalf Of Hebenstreit, Michael
Sent: Friday, November 21, 2008 3:10 PM
To: ewg at lists.openfabrics.org
Subject: [ewg] Panel at SC08/Austin

At the session I raised points about missing documentation and was askled to summarize my ideas and write it to this list. specifically I would like to see

a) a PDF binder of all mans/docs already available in the distribution on the web site
b) a howto start with OFED (example: a collegue of mine had no idea that he needs a running opensm ...)
c) for each special feature like "ipoib, sdp, opensm..." one or two pages describing WHAT the technology want's to achieve, plus some examples how it is used; how to enable/configure it
d) on technologies like VERB/DAPL/...: one or two pages describing WHAT the technology want's to achieve, plus some examples how it is used; a few simple examples how to program with the libraries (at the level of a MPI introduction)

best regards
Michael


------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Hebenstreit                 Senior Cluster Architect
Intel Corporation                   Software and Services Group/DRD
2800 N Center Dr, DP3-307           Tel.:   +1 253 371 3144
WA 98327, DuPont
UNITED STATES                       E-mail: michael.hebenstreit at intel.com

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