[openib-general] Which driver to choose, OpenIB or IBGD?

[Dotan Barak]

Hi Ian and  welcome to the IB scene ...
 
 
There are several things you should consider when you choose the stack
to work with:
Life
-----
*	The IBGD is based on the VAPI driver (which won't be developed
much in the future)
*	The openIB is under development
 
Stability
-----------
*	Both of the drivers are stable
 
Support
------------
*	IBGD:  Mellanox support will answer to your questions
*	openIB: all the opebIB members can help you and answer to your
questions
 
Debug features
---------------------
*	the IBGD is more programmer friendly environment (the return
value help you understand exactly what the error was)
*	not friendly at all: the return value in case of error will be
-1 (most of the times) without any debug print or specific return value
to different errors
 
Supported HW
--------------------
*	IBGD: Mellanox HCAs are being supported
*	openIB : Mellanox / IBM / PathScale HCAs are being supported
 
 
Supported Linux kernels versions
------------------------------------------------
*	IBGD support kernel 2.4.*, 2.6* (up to 2.6.11)
*	openIB support the latest kernel.org 
 
Latency
-----------
*	openIB based applications can may better latency than IBGD based
applicaitons
 
 
Few weeks ago, Mellanox published IBG2 (which is a stable version of the
openIB driver)
 
 
Dotan
 
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