[ofa-general] RE: [mwg] Re: RDMA tutorial and OFA

[Ryan, Jim]

At the risk of piling on, I think what Lloyd is suggesting is very important. The objections I continue to hear about programming using RDMA are along the lines of "it's too hard" or "no one knows how to do it".

It occurs to me if we could provide some concise instruction, that, coupled with the undeniable benefits of RDMA, could provide a compelling package for "RDMA for the masses"

thanks, Jim

________________________________
From: mwg-bounces at lists.openfabrics.org [mailto:mwg-bounces at lists.openfabrics.org] On Behalf Of Lloyd Dickman
Sent: Thursday, April 30, 2009 1:17 PM
To: arkady kanevsky; bill.boas at openfabrics.org
Cc: iwg at lists.openfabrics.org; Paul Grun; OFA at lists.openfabrics.org; Paul Gray; Working Group; Wayne Augsburger; Andy Grover; Richard Frank; Jeff at lists.openfabrics.org; Squyres; Mikkel Hagen; Scott at lists.openfabrics.org; general at lists.openfabrics.org; Friedman; bobs at voltaire.com; Sumanta Chatterjee; asafs`@voltaire.com; Roland Dreier
Subject: RE: [mwg] Re: RDMA tutorial and OFA

I support the idea of the RDMA tutorial.  Beyond the "meat" as described below, I would encourage the tutorial to include a "how to program RDMA" section.  While OFA Verbs provides a rich set of mechanisms, it is difficult for the average programmer to get a solid handle on how to use the capabilities, register memory, ...  Some cookbook examples, or perhaps development of several programming "patterns" can go a long way to having RDMA become a much more mainstream application programming paradigm.

Lloyd

From: mwg-bounces at lists.openfabrics.org [mailto:mwg-bounces at lists.openfabrics.org] On Behalf Of arkady kanevsky
Sent: Thursday, April 30, 2009 11:27 AM
To: bill.boas at openfabrics.org
Cc: iwg at lists.openfabrics.org; Paul Grun; Paul Gray; OFA Marketing Working Group; Wayne Augsburger; Andy Grover; Richard Frank; asafs`@voltaire.com; Jeff Squyres; Mikkel Hagen; general at lists.openfabrics.org; Scott Friedman; bobs at voltaire.com; Sumanta Chatterjee; Roland Dreier
Subject: [mwg] Re: RDMA tutorial and OFA

Keep me in the loop.
I am interested to do it also.
Thanks,
Arkady
On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 1:39 PM, Bill Boas <Bill.Boas at openfabrics.org<mailto:Bill.Boas at openfabrics.org>> wrote:
Richard, Andy,

Thanks for copying me Richard. I had not seen Andy's email on the general
list.

Figuring out how to get tutorial and other documentation created and
published in the list of things to get done in 2009 for me in my part-time
role as Exec. Dir.

There is no funding set up for this at the moment but I believe there will
be in about 30 days.

That's because I'm thinking that we can get funding for this by making it
part of the funding for a new marketing plan for OFA that, with Wayne
Augsburger and Jim Ryan, we are preparing for the OFA Board to vote on at
the next con-call meeting which is on May 20 at 9.00AM PDT.

Would you be willing to work with me and create a small team from others
within OFA who have the same interest to prepare a description by May 20 of
what the tutorial would look like, who would contribute to it, how to get it
"polished up" for web and/or book style publication, what the overall costs
would be, etc.

My thoughts, that could be a starting point for the team's work, are that we
would make the creation a collective effort.

The tutorial would have several sections for example general intro, benefits
of RDMA, applicability in HPC and Enterprise, networking background etc.
Members of the Marketing Working Group would be responsible for this.

The "meat" would be sections for kernel level things (verbs etc.), then user
space things (verbs etc.), then APIs like MPI, SDP, EDS etc. - each section
overseen by the technical leaders/maintainers of the code within OFA for
that section (for Example Tom Talpey for NFSoRDMA, or you Richard for RDS)

Finally the tutorial would have sections about Interoperability Testing that
OFA/IOL does but also what customers can do on there own systems - Arkady
and Rupert and IOL have put in an SC09 tutorial proposal that we could
leverage in this section.

To all readers of this email:-
If you have read this far, please give us all some feedback. If you have
material you'd like to contribute please say so. If there's a better way,
tell us what you think it is!

Thanks,

Bill.

Bill Boas
Executive Director and Vice Chair
OpenFabrics Alliance
510-375-8840
Bill.Boas at openfabrics.org<mailto:Bill.Boas at openfabrics.org>
www.openfabrics.org<http://www.openfabrics.org>

-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Frank [mailto:richard.frank at oracle.com<mailto:richard.frank at oracle.com>]
Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 12:58 PM
To: Andy Grover
Cc: Bill Boas; Sumanta Chatterjee
Subject: Re: RDMA tutorial and OFA

Andy, I saw your postings to ofa-general on this and I agree it would be
great to have this documentation.

As OpenFabrics is really about RDMA... we need to make it simpler
for folks to pick up and run with RDMA concepts ...vs.. digging thru the IB
specs and code examples, etc.

Let's see what Bill Boas thinks...perhaps OFA has a writer on board that
can help us do this..?

I can also help provide input for a new OFA RDMA tutorial doc..

Rick

Andy Grover wrote:
> Hi Rick,
>
> Are you around for a brief chat this afternoon? I have a crazy idea that
> involves OFA doing something (or putting up $$) and I wanted to see what
> you thought, since you're Oracle's OFA rep, right?
>
> -- Andy
>
>



--
Cheers,
Arkady Kanevsky
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