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Several open-source efforts for enabling RDMA services on Linux
have recently been initiated.
OpenRDMA
starts from RNICPI, a transport-neutral and openly accessible specification
supported by several iWARP RNIC vendors, and favors a layered architecture
with a clean separation between generic and verbs-provider-specific
functionality.
OpenIB was originally
focused on InfiniBand and has recently announced its intent to also
support iWARP by forming the OpenFabrics alliance. OpenIB maintains
the InfiniBand driver component in the mainline Linux kernel.
OpenFabrics
is the successor of OpenIB and develops transport agnostic open-source
software for RDMA fabric technologies. Founded in June 2004 as the
OpenIB Alliance to develop a Linux-based InfiniBand software stack,
the organization has expanded its charter to support iWARP (RDMA
over Ethernet).
Despite the competition between these still young open-source efforts,
we assume that the Linux support for iWARP and InfiniBand-based
RDMA will evolve and converge mostly based on performance considerations.
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