[ewg] OFA EWG Meeting: Monday, Nov 18th, 2019 - Minutes

[Davis, Arlin R]

Attendees                    Company
Bill Snapko                    HPE
Arlin Davis                     Intel

Bob Woodruff               Intel
Rupert Dance               SW Forge

Vladimir Sokolovsky    Mellanox

Adit Ranadive                VMware
Sindhu Devale              Intel


Minutes:



Summary - Decision was made to skip OFED 5.3 and target kernel.org 5.5 in January 2020



*         OFED_5.3 - (Oct 18) https://downloads.openfabrics.org/downloads/OFED/ofed-5.3-daily/OFED-5.3-20191018-2019.tgz

*         This latest build has Huawei driver building successfully in 5.3 kernel.

*         Vendor email responses to question about 5.3 or 5.5 direction (a majority favor skipping 5.3, wait for 5.5):

     *   Mellanox - Vlad (most backports complete) - will work OFED 5.x if vendors are committed; if not they will focus on MOFED
     *   Chelsio - Bharat (no resource commitments for OFED 5.3) - vote for skipping 5.3 and work 5.5
     *   Cavium- Michal (no resources, disable for 5.3) - no commit to 5.5 backports, will support OFED-5.x out-of-box kernel.
     *   Broadcom - Devesh (resources tight, no ETA for backports) - No response ????
     *   VMware - Adit (not ready for 5.3, move to 5.5) - committed to OFED, skipping 5.3 and work 5.5
     *   Huawei - Lijun Ou (working with Vlad on 5.3 and backports) - working on 5.3, would rather not wait
     *   Intel (i40iw) - Henry (5.3 kernel support only, no change from OFED 4.18) - no backport work, kernel.org version only.


  *   Much discussion regarding OFED 5.3 versus 5.5 and the need for OFED going forward
     *   The distro in-box versions for rdma_core (kernel/user) have reduced the upstream driver gap (only ~6 months behind)
        *   Vlad mentioned that RH8.1 pulls in rdma_core drivers from 5.x (5.3?) kernel base, user rdma-core at v22.3
     *   OFED takes 6 months for release cycles, reducing the advantage over in-box distros that are only 6-12 months behind upstream.
     *   OFED added value discussed - maybe backporting upstream to older distro versions?
        *   Problems backporting to some of these older kernels, dependencies beyond rdma_core components make it very difficult
     *   OFED may have run its course, served its purpose and EWG may not be needed?



  *   Decision was made to skip OFED 5.3 and target kernel.org 5.5 in January 2020.
     *   Any objections should to be presented to EWG community via the email list, ASAP
     *   EWG will reconvene in January; confirm vendor commitments to OFED before starting kernel.org-5.5 work



 Please feel free to add/correct as needed.



Regards,



Arlin


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