On Nov 7, 2007, at 9:33 PM, Patrick Geoffray wrote:
Remember that this is all in the context of Galen's proposal for
btl_send() to be able to return NOT_ON_WIRE -- meaning that the send
was successful, but it has not yet been sent (e.g., openib BTL
buffered it because it ran out of credits).
Sorry if I miss something obvious, but why does the PML has to be
aware
of the flow control situation of the BTL ? If the BTL cannot send
something right away for any reason, it should be the responsibility
of
the BTL to buffer it and to progress on it later.
That's currently the way it is. But the BTL currently only has the
option to say two things:
1. "ok, done!" -- then the PML will think that the request is complete
2. "doh -- error!" -- then the PML thinks that Something Bad
Happened(tm)
What we really need is for the BTL to have a third option:
3. "not done yet!"
So that the PML knows that the request is not yet done, but will allow
other things to progress while we're waiting for it to complete.
Without this, the openib BTL currently replies "ok, done!", even when
it has only buffered a message (rather than actually sending it out).
This optimization works great (yeah, I know...) except for apps that
don't dip into the MPI library frequently. :-\
--
Jeff Squyres
Cisco Systems
