As I mentioned on the call a week ago, the usnic BTL has been updated to use libfabric (instead of verbs).
What is libfabric? --> Think of it as a "next generation verbs" -- it's OS-bypass networking for a wide range of network hardware, and libfabric contains many more capabilities than the verbs API. libfabric is being developed by most the same people who initially developed verbs; it's not in competition with verbs -- it's a true "next generation" effort. See http://ofiwg.github.io/libfabric/ for more detail. Why should anyone care? --> The usnic BTL has been updated to use libfabric. I have therefore removed all usnic-specific code from the verbs parts of the OMPI code base (e.g., opal/mca/common). Additionally, there will shortly be another commit that introduces another OMPI network device that uses libfabric. Did you really just embed libfabric in opal/common/libfabric? --> Yes -- but this is temporary. libfabric isn't v1.0 yet -- there aren't libfabric tarballs being distributed. Hence, other than git-cloning the libfabric github repo, you can't easily build OMPI against libfabric. So we are temporarily embedding a copy of libfabric in OMPI, partly for convenience, and partly because the libfabric API is still changing slightly -- we need a stable libfabric stake in the ground against which to build the usnic and other components. We'll update the embedded libfabric periodically to keep up with its development (e.g., I just did, earlier this morning). We anticipate removing the embedded copy of libfabric at some point in the future. Whoa; I'm getting a slew of -pedantic warnings when compiling libfabric! --> Yeah, sorry about that. :-( I added a pragma this morning that should remove some of them, but there's still a bunch of -pedantic warnings when you compile opal/mca/common/libfabric. We're working with libfabric upstream to get them fixed. Stay tuned. -- Jeff Squyres jsquy...@cisco.com For corporate legal information go to: http://www.cisco.com/web/about/doing_business/legal/cri/
