[openib-general] [PATCH]proposal for enabling partial ports on HCA

[Shirley Ma]

> I don't agree that we want to handle "half-usable" devices where some
> ports don't work.  The only use for this seems to be working around
> some problems with the current Galaxy HCA implementation, and there
> must be a better way to handle this.
> You're welcome to prove me wrong, but I think that handling ports that
> are not usable and then become usable later is just going to be
> horrible.  And if we do that, then I think it would make sense to
> handle ports starting out usable and then becoming unusable later --
> and I think that's going to be even worse still.

I don't think we handle "half-usable" devices here. We treat each port as 
an individual "device" in many layers, ports to ports are independent. For 
each HCA which could be as many as 256 ports, I think it makes more sense 
to handle per port, not per HCA device based.

Second, The IB SW stack shouldn't prevent any implementation from handling 
later ports becoming usable. The SW implementation should support all 
kinds of HCA implementations. Doesn't matter if it is IBM HCAs or HCAs 
from other vendors in the future. 

Third ib_cache & ib_ipoib implmentation actually allow "half-usable" 
devices. It allows other ports initializing while one port has errors.

Thanks
Shirley Ma
IBM Linux Technology Center
15300 SW Koll Parkway
Beaverton, OR 97006-6063
Phone(Fax): (503) 578-7638

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