[ofa-general] RE: [ewg] RFC: Do we wish to take MPI out ofOFED?

[Yiftah Shahar]

Hi Pasha,

> As I mentioned previously I sure that this step will push users from
> OFED distributions towards vendors packages, like it was before
> first OFED release.

First I want it will be clear - I do not want to push customers to
"vendor packages".
Our "end in mind" is that our customers will get what they need from
distro, not from any "OFED package".
Both RH and Novell (and others) are doing excellent work taking what we
all developed (to upstream kernel) and they are now almost up to speed
with OFED release cycle.

HPC customer that taking OFED src from OFA, compiling it to their
specific OS/kernel can easily handle taking MPI package from the MPI
.org www.
Other customers that want to work with "vendor OFED" stack do not "care"
what is the MPI in OFED, they get what vendor provide.

For latest OS we recommend to our customers - use IB stack that is
coming from OS, it is mature & stable, if you have any issue (or need
new feature/bug fix) we will work directly with distro to fix it or can
provide a fast fix.


> What will you answer on user's question: "How can I install MPI with
> OFED support ?"
> Will you send user to read 10 pages of MPI Installation FAQ ? :-)
How does Ethernet customers have MPI, do they get it as part of the TCP
stack ?
(actually they do not get the stack outside the kernel or distro but
this is different discussion :-) )

Our customers (especially the HPC ones) can go to open src project
download and install it, if the MPI is too complicated to be install
with "RDMA" support then MPI maintainers need to help their customers
and make it simpler (simple installation and better readme).


Regards,
Yiftah




> -----Original Message-----
> From: Pavel Shamis (Pasha) [mailto:pashash at gmail.com]
> Sent: Monday, June 15, 2009 16:53
> To: Yiftah Shahar
> Cc: Pavel Shamis (Pasha); Tziporet Koren; EWG; OpenFabrics General
> Subject: Re: [ofa-general] RE: [ewg] RFC: Do we wish to take MPI out
> ofOFED?
> 
> 
> >
> > I can see from the mails and from my personal experience that most
of
> > the "end users" do not need/use the MPI coming as part of OFED (they
> > have many different MPI installed in their clusters), as we can see
> > distro are not using it and also some (if not all) of OFED binary
> > package providers (i.e. companies) do not use it.
> >
> > We think that the simple & clear answer is: "take the MPI packages
out
> > of OFED"
> >
> 
> It is not so simple and clear for me after all this discussion on the
> thread.
> Some OFED member want to remove MPIs and some strongly against it (the
> same correct for OFED user community
> too).
> 
> As I mentioned previously I sure that this step will push users from
> OFED distributions
> towards vendors packages, like it was before first OFED release.
> 
> What will you answer on user's question: "How can I install MPI with
> OFED support ?"
> Will you send user to read 10 pages of MPI Installation FAQ ? :-)
> 
> My 0.02 $
> 
> Pasha
> 
> 
>