[ofw] New Developer

[Fab Tillier]

Hi Scott,

Ah, so you're going to run into some problems right off the bat:
- The NDK provider to enable SMB Direct isn't in the source tree
- The InfiniHost III cards are past end-of-life from Mellanox's perspective
- The HW capabilities aren't there in those HCAs, in fact some earlier versions of ConnectX HCAs aren't supported either.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. :(

-Fab

Scott Kreel wrote on Tue, 12 Jun 2012 at 14:53:22

> Wow, thanks for the quick response Fab!
> 
> I have a bunch of Mellanox Infinihost III Ex cards (all MHEA28-XTC) and
> I'd like to be able to see if I can get SMB Direct to work over them.
> I've relatively new to Windows driver development and I thought that
> trying to add kRDMA support to these old cards would be a great way to
> learn.  Assuming there isn't some hardware limitation that is preventing
> these older cards from working?  Again, I'm new but I'm thinking I would
> need to update the NDIS miniport in the existing ofed code base to
> support the new NDIS 6.3 API?  Any guidance and help is appreciated!
> 
> Thanks!
> Scott
>
> On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 4:29 PM, Fab Tillier <ftillier at microsoft.com> wrote:
> Hi Scott,
> 
> Welcome!
> 
> Scott Kreel wrote on Tue, 12 Jun 2012 at 14:14:10
> 
>> Where should a new developer start in order to get familiar with the
>> code base and the directory structure?
> That's a tough question.  Generally, the codebase is architected as:
> - core: all process management, IOCTL handling, anything non-HW
> specific.  The drivers here are generally loaded as filter drivers above
> the HW driver.
> - hw: HW specific driver, makes the device work.
> - ulp: Upper Level Protocols, the various drivers and DLLs that let you
> actually do something with the driver stack.  E.g. OpenSM, IPoIB,
> NetworkDirect provider
> 
> If you can say what you are interested in, it will be easier to give you
> more specific guidance.
> 
> Cheers,
> -Fab
> 
>