[ofiwg] OFI WG - minor naming issue -- asking for comment

Paul Grun grun at cray.com
Mon Nov 10 12:41:57 PST 2014


This was discussed *at length* in the working group many moons ago.  The officially accepted name is OpenFabrics Interfaces.  At least that's how I remember it.
-Paul

-----Original Message-----
From: ofiwg-bounces at lists.openfabrics.org [mailto:ofiwg-bounces at lists.openfabrics.org] On Behalf Of Jeff Hammond
Sent: Friday, November 07, 2014 10:35 AM
To: Ryan, Jim
Cc: ofiwg at lists.openfabrics.org
Subject: Re: [ofiwg] OFI WG - minor naming issue -- asking for comment

At one point, I googled all the _FI and SFI was one of the least conflicted. 

Every acronym is taken already unless we go to 4+ characters. The conflict noted below is unlikely to confuse any human. 

Jeff 

Sent from my iPhone

> On Nov 7, 2014, at 6:56 PM, "Ryan, Jim" <jim.ryan at intel.com> wrote:
> 
> Jason, thanks for the note and this is a critical point. You've set it up nicely. The point, I think, is that abbreviations are inherently "non-specific". If you Google "SFI" you'll get all kinds of things, including the Wikipedia definition of the "Sustainable Forest Initiative", a non-profit organization for quality standards for race cars and many others. That's why it's important the context is set by providing the full text "Scalable Fabric Interfaces".
> 
> At the same time, I wouldn't consider using the abbreviation "IBM" in this way. Some abbreviations should be viewed as simply taken.
> 
> Therefore I think the ultimate questions is whether any of the other 
> uses of "SFI" rise to the level of making it essentially unavailable 
> for our use
> 
> Thanks again for the point you made
> 
> Regards, Jim
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jason Gunthorpe [mailto:jgunthorpe at obsidianresearch.com]
> Sent: Friday, November 7, 2014 9:45 AM
> To: Hefty, Sean
> Cc: Ryan, Jim; ofiwg at lists.openfabrics.org
> Subject: Re: [ofiwg] OFI WG - minor naming issue -- asking for comment
> 
> On Fri, Nov 07, 2014 at 05:33:38PM +0000, Hefty, Sean wrote:
>>> I???m sorry for this additional email to the reflector. Based on 
>>> some of the responses I got, I need to explain how I intend to use 
>>> the abbreviation ???SFI???. The abbreviation ???SFI??? would follow 
>>> the use of the term ???Scalable Fabric Interface??? in a press 
>>> release or whatever, so it???d be clear from that context.
>> 
>> Libfabric doesn't just jump off the marketing pages?  :)
> 
> SFI is also already used by a trade association for the electrical 
> specificaiton for the physical interface between a chip and a
> SFP+/QSFP+ module.
> 
> Jason
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