linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v3 00/14] Adding GAUDI NIC code to habanalabs driver

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Message-ID: <20200922161429.GI8409@ziepe.ca>
Date:   Tue, 22 Sep 2020 13:14:29 -0300
From:   Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@...pe.ca>
To:     Gal Pressman <galpress@...zon.com>
Cc:     Oded Gabbay <oded.gabbay@...il.com>,
        Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>,
        izur@...ana.ai, Jakub Kicinski <kuba@...nel.org>,
        "Linux-Kernel@...r. Kernel. Org" <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        netdev@...r.kernel.org, SW_Drivers <SW_Drivers@...ana.ai>,
        "David S. Miller" <davem@...emloft.net>,
        Andrew Lunn <andrew@...n.ch>,
        Florian Fainelli <f.fainelli@...il.com>,
        linux-rdma@...r.kernel.org, Olof Johansson <olof@...om.net>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 00/14] Adding GAUDI NIC code to habanalabs driver

On Tue, Sep 22, 2020 at 03:46:29PM +0300, Gal Pressman wrote:

> I agree, that makes sense.
> But assuming Oded actually goes and implements all the needed verbs to get a
> basic functional libibverbs provider (assuming their HW can do it somehow), is
> it really useful if no one is going to use it?
> It doesn't sound like habanalabs want people to use GAUDI as an RDMA adapter,
> and I'm assuming the only real world use case is going to be using the hl stack,
> which means we're left with a lot of dead code that's not used/tested by anyone.
> 
> Genuine question, wouldn't it be better if they only implement what's actually
> going to be used and tested by their customers?

The general standard for this 'accel' hardware, both in DRM and RDMA
is to present an open source userspace. Companies are encouraged to
use that as their main interface but I suppose are free to carry the
cost of dual APIs, and the community's wrath if they want.

At least for RDMA this is guided by the founding event of Linux RDMA
where all customers demanded the madness of every supplier having a
unique software stack from the kernel down stop. Since then the low
level stack has been cross vendor and uniform.

Jason