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

[Stephen Poole]

+1.

I am not sure if I nor many of the folks I have worked for have ever
taken advantage of the
IOP-Lab. As most folks are focused on evaluating the latest HW at all
levels, having old HW/SW
is less than useful.

Having a Specification which is vendor agnostic, is exceptionally
important. This then can
lead to a V&V suite, which is also vendor agnostic. If vendors wish to
hide "special" stuff
under the driver/FW/HW... then this can be done within the framework of
the vendor SW/FW.
Having done something similar for other projects, this is valuable to
the customer base as
well as the vendor base. The V&V suite also forces compliance at the SW
levels. It does not
force "plug compatibility". In most cases, IBTA has the HW spec, OFA
does not. HW compatibility
or not, will certainly be judged by the customer base. Although at this
time, can anyone show
where this actually exists?

I do know that many folks have looked to OFA for clarity on which
software stack is the most
complete and up to date for new and old systems. That did not work as
well, as many times other
releases were more up to date or had improved features. So, there the
focus again was on SW.
Yes, customers DO care about SW, SW interoperability and consistency 
between HW/SW vendor
offerings. Remember the many divergences from this we have had. This is
one of the reasons
many in the user/customer community have considered the value of OFA to
have been greatly
diminished.

Testing OLD HW has little to NO value.

Just my opinion.

Steve...

On 8/31/17 18:37, Christoph Lameter wrote:
> Which companies are participating in the IWG? It seems that Mellanox
> is at this point the overwhelming provider of most of the Infiniband
> technology with just minor niches occupied by others. Our own
> experience with trying to use technology from Qlogic on a single
> system (2011) failed miserably. Intel is moving to Omnipath. Others
> simply focus on Ethernet to have a vendor neutral shared standard.
>
> It seems to us therefore (Jump Trading) that there is a trend for
> interconnect technology to become vendor specific whereas the APIs to
> access the interconnect (RDMA subsystem in the kernel) provide a
> common way of using these fabrics by essentially providing a hardware
> abstraction layer for fabrics in the Linux Kernel.
>
> Given this I would like to see a list of participants in the IWG and
> if its is as dominated as I think it is by Mellanox then we should
> slowly shut down the program and focus on the software layer while
> continuing to provide a forum for the exchange of innovative ideas
> about fabrics.
>
>
>
> On Thu, Aug 31, 2017 at 7:28 PM, Jim Ryan <jimdryan at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Ok, I think I see your point. Your consciously blending membership dues with
>> interop program participation to make a point. I don't want to argue that
>> point, but I do want to be painfully clear about something. The approach we
>> take is conscious and, for example, specifically contrary to, for example
>> the IBTA. We view interop as a program of value to participants who make the
>> biz decision to fund it. The IBTA, in contrast, views testing as a member
>> benefit available to all based on membership dues.
>>
>> Those of us who have been involved with this issue, actually for years,
>> share your frustration, if I may characterize it as such, with the apparent
>> indifference on the part of the vast majority of members. There have been
>> important contributions in the past in the form of donated equipment, but
>> I'll quickly ack this has been from a small number of donors and not
>> recently. The actual components are, AFAIK, left behind after testing. I
>> have requested another call for donations but, for whatever reason, that
>> hasn't happened.
>>
>> I *do* have to ask you to not use terms along the lines of "membership
>> funding"; there is no such thing. There is participant funding and a degree
>> of "membership" indifference. I'm trying to ack an element of your argument
>> but continue to make the distinction clear.
>>
>> Re the quality of testing, that's a challenge for the IWG. One of, if not
>> *the* most important thing they're responsible for is quality of testing. If
>> something is broken there, I'm not aware of it, and we need to come to
>> understand this.
>>
>> Finally, I realized I failed to respond to a point you made earlier. It's
>> kinda delicate, but important. The OFA is specifically not "chartered" to
>> develop specs and the IBTA and others are. There are IP provisions that need
>> to exist if this is part of our mission or not. I can give you boring
>> details if you want to hear more.
>>
>> The reason this is delicate is because the OFIWG has had to go right to the
>> edge of what we can do, to use MAN pages to document expected API
>> functionality. We have agreed this is short of a spec, but you get the
>> point; it's a fine but important distinction.
>>
>> I hope this helps, Jim
>>
>> On Thu, Aug 31, 2017 at 4:50 PM, Jason Gunthorpe
>> <jgunthorpe at obsidianresearch.com> wrote:
>>> On Thu, Aug 31, 2017 at 04:05:49PM -0700, Jim Ryan wrote:
>>>
>>>> First, Jason, it appears you're working under a misunderstanding
>>>> which I think Bill tried to correct, but perhaps he could have used
>>>> different words. The interop program is self-funding in the sense
>>>> the cost of the testing is borne
>>> No, I do understand this very well.
>>>
>>> The fact IWG participation is optional, and that it is billed on a
>>> cost recovery basis, is not relevant to my point. I am observing that
>>> of all the funds the membership chooses to send to the OFA, 50% are
>>> directed to UNH-IOL (by the direct choice of the membership).
>>>
>>> While at the same time the membership cannot be bothered to properly
>>> equip UNH-IOL to actually test the software, and does not seem
>>> interested in the logo program.
>>>
>>> So, exactly why, is the membership choosing to continue fund this?
>>>
>>>> Re the logo program being out of date and maybe valueless, I can
>>>> simply say two things. I know of vendors for whom this *testing* is
>>>> extremely important. I view that info as being confidential so as
>>>> loathsome as it is to me, I have to ask you to trust me. Notice I'm
>>>> not making the same claim for the logo.
>>> From what I can see the testing is far less useful than I assumed it
>>> was. Maybe your sources are also operating under poor assumptions?
>>>
>>> Jason
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Ofa_boardplus mailing list
>> Ofa_boardplus at lists.openfabrics.org
>> http://lists.openfabrics.org/mailman/listinfo/ofa_boardplus
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Ofa_boardplus mailing list
> Ofa_boardplus at lists.openfabrics.org
> http://lists.openfabrics.org/mailman/listinfo/ofa_boardplus

-- 
Regards,
Steve...

May you be able to pursue what you love, yet excel at what you
must do.


-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 841 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.openfabrics.org/pipermail/ofa_boardplus/attachments/20170901/d91c3af5/attachment.sig>