Re: [RFC PATCH 08/11] IB/Verbs: Use management helper has_iwarp() for, iwarp-check

From: Tom Talpey
Date: Tue Mar 31 2015 - 10:04:04 EST


On 3/31/2015 7:41 AM, Michael Wang wrote:
Hi, Tom

Thanks for the comments :-)

On 03/31/2015 01:19 PM, Tom Talpey wrote:

[oops - repeating my reply with full cc's]

[snip]


Actually I'm thinking about Doug's idea to use rdma_transport_is_XX()
instead of the current basic helper, thus may be use rdma_transport_is_iwarp()
in here could be better, since it's actually a feature of iwarp tech
that RDMA Read only support one scatter-gather entry.

No, you should expose an attribute to surface the maximum length of
the remote gather list, which varies by adapter as well as protocol.
The fact that iWARP is different from IB is not relevant, and conflates
unrelated properties.

To be confirmed, so your point is that the max-read-sges will be different
even the transport is the same IWRAP, and that depends on the capability
of adapter, correct?

Yes, in fact the iWARP protocol does not preclude multiple read SGEs,
even though most iWARP implementations have chosen to support just one.

Even for multi-SGE-capable adapters, there is a limit of SGL size, based
on the adapter's work request format and other factors. So my argument
is that upper layers can and should query that, not make a blanket
decision based on protocol type.


I currently only find this one place where infer max-read-sges from
transport type, it looks more like a special case to me rather than a generic
method we could exposed... and also not very related with IB management
helper concept IMHO.

It is most certainly not a special case, but you could decide to
introduce it in many ways. I'm not commenting on that.

My main concern is that you do not introduce a new and clumsy "is iWARP"
rule as an adapter-specific API requirement to expose the RDMA Read SGE
behavior. That's what your initial message seemed to imply?


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