I'd also like to call the IWG's and MWG's attention to the other
thread currently running on the general list: "New proposal for memory
management."
There are many points in there about attracting non-HPC / enterprise
network programmers to write verbs-based applications. It's not just
documentation / education that is missing -- having a series of FAQs
and tutorials about verbs programming is not enough. You need a
network programming API that is no more complex than common sockets
usage.
Specifically: let's not forget that HPC (OF's biggest market right
now) tends to attract network programmers with PhD's, and/or who are
among the top programming talent in the world (yes, that's being
snobbish -- but it's still true). To make OF within reach of the
masses, you want to lower the bar so that legions of sockets-based
network programmers can hope to learn/use this stuff without requiring
them to get a PhD first.
On Apr 30, 2009, at 6:12 PM, Ryan, Jim wrote:
At the risk of piling on, I think what Lloyd is suggesting is very
important. The objections I continue to hear about programming using
RDMA are along the lines of "it's too hard" or "no one knows how to
do it".
It occurs to me if we could provide some concise instruction, that,
coupled with the undeniable benefits of RDMA, could provide a
compelling package for "RDMA for the masses"
thanks, Jim
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]
] On Behalf Of Lloyd Dickman
Sent: Thursday, April 30, 2009 1:17 PM
To: arkady kanevsky; [email protected]
Cc: [email protected]; Paul Grun; [email protected];
Paul Gray; Working Group; Wayne Augsburger; Andy Grover; Richard
Frank;[email protected]; Squyres; Mikkel Hagen; [email protected]
; [email protected]; Friedman; [email protected];
Sumanta Chatterjee;[email protected]; Roland Dreier
Subject: RE: [mwg] Re: RDMA tutorial and OFA
I support the idea of the RDMA tutorial. Beyond the “meat” as
described below, I would encourage the tutorial to include a “how to
program RDMA” section. While OFA Verbs provides a rich set of
mechanisms, it is difficult for the average programmer to get a
solid handle on how to use the capabilities, register memory, …
Some cookbook examples, or perhaps development of several
programming “patterns” can go a long way to having RDMA become a
much more mainstream application programming paradigm.
Lloyd
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]
] On Behalf Of arkady kanevsky
Sent: Thursday, April 30, 2009 11:27 AM
To: [email protected]
Cc: [email protected]; Paul Grun; Paul Gray; OFA Marketing
Working Group; Wayne Augsburger; Andy Grover; Richard Frank; [email protected]
; Jeff Squyres; Mikkel Hagen;[email protected]; Scott
Friedman; [email protected]; Sumanta Chatterjee; Roland Dreier
Subject: [mwg] Re: RDMA tutorial and OFA
Keep me in the loop.
I am interested to do it also.
Thanks,
Arkady
On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 1:39 PM, Bill Boas
<[email protected]> wrote:
Richard, Andy,
Thanks for copying me Richard. I had not seen Andy's email on the
general
list.
Figuring out how to get tutorial and other documentation created and
published in the list of things to get done in 2009 for me in my
part-time
role as Exec. Dir.
There is no funding set up for this at the moment but I believe
there will
be in about 30 days.
That's because I'm thinking that we can get funding for this by
making it
part of the funding for a new marketing plan for OFA that, with Wayne
Augsburger and Jim Ryan, we are preparing for the OFA Board to vote
on at
the next con-call meeting which is on May 20 at 9.00AM PDT.
Would you be willing to work with me and create a small team from
others
within OFA who have the same interest to prepare a description by
May 20 of
what the tutorial would look like, who would contribute to it, how
to get it
"polished up" for web and/or book style publication, what the
overall costs
would be, etc.
My thoughts, that could be a starting point for the team's work, are
that we
would make the creation a collective effort.
The tutorial would have several sections for example general intro,
benefits
of RDMA, applicability in HPC and Enterprise, networking background
etc.
Members of the Marketing Working Group would be responsible for this.
The "meat" would be sections for kernel level things (verbs etc.),
then user
space things (verbs etc.), then APIs like MPI, SDP, EDS etc. - each
section
overseen by the technical leaders/maintainers of the code within OFA
for
that section (for Example Tom Talpey for NFSoRDMA, or you Richard
for RDS)
Finally the tutorial would have sections about Interoperability
Testing that
OFA/IOL does but also what customers can do on there own systems -
Arkady
and Rupert and IOL have put in an SC09 tutorial proposal that we could
leverage in this section.
To all readers of this email:-
If you have read this far, please give us all some feedback. If you
have
material you'd like to contribute please say so. If there's a better
way,
tell us what you think it is!
Thanks,
Bill.
Bill Boas
Executive Director and Vice Chair
OpenFabrics Alliance
510-375-8840
[email protected]
www.openfabrics.org
-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Frank [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 12:58 PM
To: Andy Grover
Cc: Bill Boas; Sumanta Chatterjee
Subject: Re: RDMA tutorial and OFA
Andy, I saw your postings to ofa-general on this and I agree it
would be
great to have this documentation.
As OpenFabrics is really about RDMA... we need to make it simpler
for folks to pick up and run with RDMA concepts ...vs.. digging thru
the IB
specs and code examples, etc.
Let's see what Bill Boas thinks...perhaps OFA has a writer on board
that
can help us do this..?
I can also help provide input for a new OFA RDMA tutorial doc..
Rick
Andy Grover wrote:
> Hi Rick,
>
> Are you around for a brief chat this afternoon? I have a crazy
idea that
> involves OFA doing something (or putting up $$) and I wanted to
see what
> you thought, since you're Oracle's OFA rep, right?
>
> -- Andy
>
>
--
Cheers,
Arkady Kanevsky
--
Jeff Squyres
Cisco Systems
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