[Ofa_boardplus] Jason's draft preso to the Linux Plumbers' Conference

[Woodruff, Robert J]

>Designing a conformance test for OFI providers does not really require a logo program, the test suite alone is enough for suppliers to self-certify, and for customers to validate >against.

I agree, the test suite and test spec is what is really important, a formal logo program may not add much if any incremental value. 

>OFA *should* be using this resource to test upstream linux around the rc candidate series so we can have *tested* RDMA in all major upstream linux releases. This gives the best >chance that a user will have access to a tested RDMA stack from their distro.

I also think that the hardware interop testing activity is also very important and valuable and would not recommend it be replaced by an upstream testing activity but
instead added as an additional testing effort.  The question comes down to finding a way to fund the additional upstream testing at UNH-IOL, which is not self-funded
like the logo program is. If the OFA wanted to directly fund some activities, then funding the testing of the upstream code during the RCs of the kernel and
rdma-core seems like it would be a very good investment.

-----Original Message-----
From: Jason Gunthorpe [mailto:jgunthorpe at obsidianresearch.com] 
Sent: Thursday, August 31, 2017 12:58 PM
To: Woodruff, Robert J <robert.j.woodruff at intel.com>
Cc: Jim Ryan <jimdryan at gmail.com>; ofa_boardplus at lists.openfabrics.org, <ofa_boardplus at lists.openfabrics.org>
Subject: Re: [Ofa_boardplus] Jason's draft preso to the Linux Plumbers' Conference

On Thu, Aug 31, 2017 at 07:17:41PM +0000, Woodruff, Robert J wrote:

> For example have had some discussions in having an OFI provider 
> certification/compliance program that people could use to test their 
> OFI providers to make sure they are semantically correct.

I think that would be a great activity, but it is not really related to UNH-IOL.

Designing a conformance test for OFI providers does not really require a logo program, the test suite alone is enough for suppliers to self-certify, and for customers to validate against.

> We have also had some discussions with the Linux distros about 
> possibly using in-box OFS in the logo program in addition to or in 
> place of using the community OFED for interop testing.

Redefining the way the hardware at UNH is used into some kind of general test suite designed for testing a Linux distribution's RDMA stack (OFED and upstream included) would be excellent..

OFA *should* be using this resource to test upstream linux around the rc candidate series so we can have *tested* RDMA in all major upstream linux releases. This gives the best chance that a user will have access to a tested RDMA stack from their distro.

.. and I think the logo program should not bundle so much under the single logo. Test the Linux software as a totally seperate activity from testing cards, cables, switches and storage targets.

Jason