InfiniBand Architecture Development and Deployment: A Strategic Guide to Server I/O Solutions
Get the knowledge and insight necessary to develop innovative solutions for system I/O and inter-process communication.
TABLE OF CONTENTS InfiniBand Architecture Development and Deployment: A Strategic Guide to Server I/O Solutions
Chapter 9: Operating System Components
The service interface library functions presented in the previous chapter exemplify the functionality and operation of the channel access layer. The next step is evaluating the responsibility and characteristics of each of the kernel agents that provide this functionality and those agents that provide the supplementary functionality.
Core Components
Core operating system components are the InfiniBand Resource Manager, the Completion Handler, and the Event Handler.
InfiniBand Resource Manager
An operating system must assert control over its resources. The InfiniBand Resource Manager is the component that maintains that control for InfiniBand resources. Each operating system has its own way to manage resources and the InfiniBand Resource Manager does not change that. However, InfiniBand is a little more complex than just managing access of the Host Channel Adapter (HCA) and its services. The key is in understanding the resources provided by the InfiniBand architecture as well as their relationships and attributes.
The InfiniBand Resource Manager is the foundation of the channel access layer as illustrated in Figure 8.4. It has the following responsibilities:
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Installation and configuration of an HCA.
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Initialization of each HCA.
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Allocation of InfiniBand resources.
Installation and Configuration of an HCA
When an HCA is installed, the operating system assigns it a name. The naming convention is operating system specific. Once installed, an HCA's name is persistent and no two HCAs can have the same assigned name. Naming can be as simple as using the HCA's node GUID (physical name). However, there are two major drawbacks with this naming convention.
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