[Openib-windows] RE: IBDM and IBMgtSim Proposal Comments

[Fab Tillier]

> From: Hal Rosenstock [mailto:halr at voltaire.com]
> Sent: Thursday, July 07, 2005 12:45 PM
> 
> On Thu, 2005-07-07 at 14:58, Eitan Zahavi wrote:
> > [EZ] There is no need to port UMAD to windows!!! We already have OSM
> > Vendor ported to it. It works on top of the existing IBAL API
> > (actually this is the first OSM Vendor that was ever built).
> 
> There is if the OpenIB diagnostics and other applications in the Linux
> environment which are not on top of the "OSM" vendor layer are to work
> in the Windows environment. That was what started this whole thread.

The discussion was about porting the diagnostics to the Windows environment.
Whether that's done by porting umad and the MAD libraries to run on top of the
IBAL MAD services APIs or by porting the diagnostics to interface directly to
IBAL hasn't been settled on.  I suppose it will be up to whoever ports the
diagnostics.  If I was porting them, I'd make them interface to the lowest level
available (just like they do in Linux).  If Eitan was porting them, he'd have
them run over the OSM vendor layer.  If you were porting them, you'd port umad.

How is porting umad any different than using the OSM vendor layer?  umad is the
lowest level API in Linux, but not in Windows.  So either the diagnostics
interface to the lowest level layer (umad for Linux, IBAL for Windows), or the
diagnostics interface to some higher abstraction layer.  If a higher abstraction
layer, why not use the existing OSM vendor layer and skip porting umad to
Windows all together?

- Fab