A few clarifications are probably worthwhile at this point.
1. No one is suggesting divorcing MPI from the OFED testing/release
cycle. It's obviously a Good Thing (and has been stated multiple
times on this thread). It is easy to indicate "good combos" of MPI
and OFED in documentation and web pages. However, most users expect
the latest MPI implementation versions to work with the latest version
of OFED (which is not unreasonable). Looking for compatibility
between older MPI/OFED versions is something that is almost always
relegated to googling.
2. The distinction between development and release phases seems to
have been blurred in this discussion. The development phase is where
MPI's collaborate with verbs developers to test new APIs,
functionality, etc. OFED is the final product, not the development
phase. Hence, I'm not sure that the point of "continual improvements
in MPI depend on bug fixes/new features in OFED" is relevant.
3. As Doug described, packaging MPI and OFED together actually makes
it *harder* for distros. Remember that RHEL and SUSE don't end up
using any of the OFED packaging; they essentially use the individual
SRPMs.
On Jun 5, 2009, at 8:37 AM, John Russo wrote:
I agree with DK from OSU. There are clear advantages to having MPI
included with OFED. Not only will it make testing of a complete
solution easier by both OFED and MPI suppliers, but it will also
improve ease of use for end users and ease of inclusion for linux
distro suppliers. As DK points out there are continual improvements
in MPIs which may depend on bug fixes and/or new features in newer
versions of OFED. Identifying a known good combination will be
important to most end users, etc.
-----Original Message-----
From: ewg-boun...@lists.openfabrics.org [mailto:ewg-boun...@lists.openfabrics.org
] On Behalf Of Dhabaleswar Panda
Sent: Thursday, June 04, 2009 2:02 PM
To: Tziporet Koren
Cc: EWG; OpenFabrics General
Subject: Re: [ewg] RFC: Do we wish to take MPI out of OFED?
Tziporet,
>Main reasons to keep MPI in OFED:
>- All participants test with the same MPI versions, and when
installing
>OFED it is ensured that MPI will work fine with this version.
>- Customers convenience in install (no need to go to more sites to
get
MPI)
>- MPI is an important RDMA ULP and although it is not developed in
OFA
>it is widely used by OFED customers
I support keeping MPI packages in the OFED because of the above
positive
points you have mentioned.
I would also like to mention that keeping MPI packages in OFED helps
to
test out various new features and functionalities (such as APM and
XRC in
the past and the new memory registration scheme being discussed now)
as
they get introduced. Such an integrated approach helps to test out
these
features at the lower layers as well as at the MPI layer. This process
helps to resolve out any bugs with the new features during the testing
process itself. It also accelerates the deployment and use of these
new
features in the community.
However, to make the complete OFED release process work smoothly for
everybody (vendors, distros, users, etc.) without affecting the
release
schedule, it is essential that stable MPI packages are added to
OFED. This
is what we have been doing wrt MVAPICH and MVAPICH2 for the last
several
years.
If the developers of any MPI package do not want it to be a part of
the
OFED due to any constraints, it should be allowed. However, such an
action
should not force to remove all MPI packages.
>From the point of view of MVAPICH and MVAPICH2 packages in OFED, we
have
been providing stable packages to OFED for the last several years
helping
the OFED community and would like to continue with this process.
Thanks,
DK
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Jeff Squyres
Cisco Systems
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