[ofw] New Developer

[Scott Kreel]

Thanks again for the response Fab!

I understand the cards are EOL and you don't work for Mellanox, but do
you know what specific HW capabilities aren't there that would prevent
me from getting it to work? Even if it's not the most performant. The
cards perform RDMA operations... I figured that since they're EOL,
that's the reason Mellanox didn't spend the resources to support SMB
direct in Windows Server 2012 with them...

So I would need to create a NDK provider (which appears to be somewhat
documented on MSDN?) and modify the NDIS miniport in the OFED code to
make it NDK-enabled...


On Jun 13, 2012, at 12:10 AM, Fab Tillier <ftillier at microsoft.com> wrote:

> 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
>>
>>
>