[Ofa_boardplus] OFED releases

[Atchley, Scott]

Hi all,

To be clear, I was asking for two things:

1) Users need a mechanism to use features/capabilities that have not landed in upstream yet

2) Interoperability

Item 1 is necessary because there is a lag getting things upstream. In the meantime, organizations are buying hardware and want to get the most benefit from it now. Landing a $200 million machine that is hobbled is not ideal. If the model is the vendor upstreams everything and provides patches for the items queued, but not landed, fine. I am also fine with a model that says that we land it in OFED and use that. The issue for both is ensuring that they work correctly with my preferred kernel/distro.

Item 2 is a reality for centers that have lots of hardware from multiple vendors. We have machines with Cray networks and IB, Intel networks and IB, etc. In these cases, it is probably best to only use the kernel/distro in-box code unless it falls under item 1. In that case, we need everyone to play nice and stop the finger pointing.

Thanks,

Scott