[openib-general] OpenIB SWG Face to Face 9/9 Meeting

[Hal Rosenstock]

Here are my notes from yesterday's OpenIB SWG meeting:

Attendees
Roland Dreier
Tom Duffy
Gunnar Gunnarsson
Sean Hefty
Matt Leininger
Libor Michalek
Hal Rosenstock

SM support is needed for initial deliverable for those without an
embedded SM (e.g. back to back HCAs).
OpenSM obtains access to kernel via character device ioctls
Is this acceptable ? There were differing views on this.
The kernel support for this is in core/useraccess_xxx.c as is done via
read/write (to send and receive MADs). Needs to be made 32/64 clean and
saner prior to kernel submission.

OSM (OpenSM) build needs to be based on autoconf/etc. This can be
deferred.

There are also patches which have gone into the gen1 branch which are
not in gen2. 

mthca is missing RDMA support and will be added beyond phase 1. 
No Arbel options are supported (only Tavor compatibility mode).
Perhaps can bind CQs to different MSI-X lines ?

Initial deliverable is by SuperComputing (mid November) to get IPoIB
working in an OpenIB stack. This includes mthca (driver), access layer
(MAD), SMI, SA client API for IPoIB, and IPoIB. (Also, hopefully OpenSM
although that is not for the kernel).

MAD layer is tall pole. Once working one available will port to this.
Goal is to have this in 2 weeks. Other OpenIB porting would occur once
the MAD layer is said to be working. SMI also needs to be developed as
does OpenIB SA client support for IPoIB which is just PathRecord (get)
and MCMemberRecord (set/get). IPoIB changes should be minor.

Should we go into Andrew Morton's tree first ?

What about OSDL ? Who can supply IB hardware for them ? Some number of
HCAs and a switch would be needed. They also may have a budget for this.

Need to make sure that the multicast mapping solution is acceptable to
Linux kernel network maintainer if this impacts the core networking
files.

Once there is a working MAD layer, there will be a new official gen2
branch with just phase 1 deliverables.
Then stable and development branches. Development would add in CM, etc.

We will need to make things easier for kernel developers. Should there
be a bkbits tree ? There needs to be a way to easily pull IB and add to
kernel including building outside the kernel. There was also discussion
about svn gateways to accomplish this. Also, there should be a nightly
cron job to tar up appropriate branches and put them in openib.org
downloads directory. 

openib.org website is confusing. The downloads are no longer applicable.
There is nothing that indicates what everything is (both gen1 and gen2).
Matt is working on improving this.

Roland indicates he will shortly post flash support including building
with autoconf. This requires no kernel support. It may need to be just
GPL'd only as it use pcitools.

-- Hal