Quoting r. Bryan O'Sullivan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > Could you please explain why is this useful? Users could not care less - > > they never have to touch an SMA. > > We have customers who use our driver who do not want a full IB stack > present, for example in embedded environments.
I understand they do, but they could just use the parts of IB stack and never notice. In my experience, embedded systems are typically diskless - why is a userspace SMA better than kernel-level one for them? The advantage would be everyone using a single kernel/user interface, common utilities for management, diagnostics ... I could go on. So what's your point? Memory usage? Let's take a look: ib_mad is the IB stack module that includes between other things the kernel-level SMA (BTW, if necessary, you should be able to split it out so that it is only loaded on demand): I think IB stack is modest, as core modules go. Here's how a loaded IB stack looks like on my system: Module Size Used by ib_mad 36260 2 ib_ipath,ib_mthca ib_core 46080 3 ib_ipath,ib_mthca,ib_mad So there are *maximum* 82K code to save. This is a 64-bit system, I think embedded systems are usually 32 bit so there'll be just 41K. And I don't believe you can save much since as a solution you seem to have re-implemented the full IB stack in your low level driver: Module Size Used by ib_ipath 79256 0 ipath_core 159764 1 ib_ipath By contrast, a low-level which doesn't reimplement IB core is just a bit above 100K. -- Michael S. Tsirkin Staff Engineer, Mellanox Technologies _______________________________________________ openib-general mailing list [email protected] http://openib.org/mailman/listinfo/openib-general To unsubscribe, please visit http://openib.org/mailman/listinfo/openib-general
