[openib-general] basic IB doubt

[Greg Lindahl]

On Thu, Aug 24, 2006 at 02:10:38PM -0700, Woodruff, Robert J wrote:

> The other way to look at it is, the customer goes to the ISV and asks,
> what hardware should I buy, and the ISV says I support X version of MPI
> and vendor Y's hardware works with X version of MPI. 

I thought the goal of InfiniBand was to create an ecosystem where you
didn't have to do this. I guess I missed something somewhere.

Adding undocumented requirements to a standard isn't the way to entice
more people into implementing or using it.

I would challenge you to find a single ISV that would prefer a
situation where some "infiniband" middleware requires things which
aren't in the standard.

> So, if you want your hardware to work with
> basically almost any MPI today, since most of the MPIs assume this
> data placement ordering, then you will make your hardware so that
> it will guarantee this type of data delivery. 

I think there's some confusion here between practicality and theory.

There's no question that any IB vendor would make that kind of
decision, although it will be expensive and annoying for iWarp vendors
to do so. They'll feel forced to do so. But this is bad for the
community.

-- greg