NAME

fi_efa - The Amazon Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA) Provider

OVERVIEW

The EFA provider supports the Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA) device on Amazon EC2. EFA provides reliable and unreliable datagram send/receive with direct hardware access from userspace (OS bypass).

SUPPORTED FEATURES

The following features are supported:

Endpoint types: The provider supports endpoint type FI_EP_DGRAM, and FI_EP_RDM on a new Scalable (unordered) Reliable Datagram protocol (SRD). SRD provides support for reliable datagrams and more complete error handling than typically seen with other Reliable Datagram (RD) implementations. The EFA provider provides segmentation, reassembly of out-of-order packets to provide send-after-send ordering guarantees to applications via its FI_EP_RDM endpoint.
RDM Endpoint capabilities: The following data transfer interfaces are supported via the FI_EP_RDM endpoint: FI_MSG, FI_TAGGED, and FI_RMA. FI_SEND, FI_RECV, FI_DIRECTED_RECV, FI_MULTI_RECV, and FI_SOURCE capabilities are supported. The endpoint provides send-after-send guarantees for data operations. The FI_EP_RDM endpoint does not have a maximum message size.
DGRAM Endpoint capabilities: The DGRAM endpoint only supports FI_MSG capability with a maximum message size of the MTU of the underlying hardware (approximately 8 KiB).
Address vectors: The provider supports FI_AV_TABLE and FI_AV_MAP address vector types. FI_EVENT is unsupported.
Completion events: The provider supports FI_CQ_FORMAT_CONTEXT, FI_CQ_FORMAT_MSG, and FI_CQ_FORMAT_DATA. FI_CQ_FORMAT_TAGGED is supported on the RDM endpoint. Wait objects are not currently supported.
Modes: The provider requires the use of FI_MSG_PREFIX when running over the DGRAM endpoint, and requires FI_MR_LOCAL for all memory registrations on the DGRAM endpoint.
Memory registration modes: The RDM endpoint does not require memory registration for send and receive operations, i.e. it does not require FI_MR_LOCAL. Applications may specify FI_MR_LOCAL in the MR mode flags in order to use descriptors provided by the application. The FI_EP_DGRAM endpoint only supports FI_MR_LOCAL.
Progress: RDM and DGRAM endpoints support FI_PROGRESS_MANUAL. EFA erroneously claims the support for FI_PROGRESS_AUTO, despite not properly supporting automatic progress. Unfortunately, some Libfabric consumers also ask for FI_PROGRESS_AUTO when they only require FI_PROGRESS_MANUAL, and fixing this bug would break those applications. This will be fixed in a future version of the EFA provider by adding proper support for FI_PROGRESS_AUTO.
Threading: The RDM endpoint supports FI_THREAD_SAFE, the DGRAM endpoint supports FI_THREAD_DOMAIN, i.e. the provider is not thread safe when using the DGRAM endpoint.

LIMITATIONS

The DGRAM endpoint does not support FI_ATOMIC interfaces. For RMA operations, completion events for RMA targets (FI_RMA_EVENT) is not supported. The DGRAM endpoint does not fully protect against resource overruns, so resource management is disabled for this endpoint (FI_RM_DISABLED).

No support for selective completions.

No support for counters for the DGRAM endpoint.

No support for inject.

When using FI_HMEM for AWS Neuron or Habana SynapseAI buffers, the provider requires peer to peer transaction support between the EFA and the FI_HMEM device. Therefore, the FI_HMEM_P2P_DISABLED option is not supported by the EFA provider for AWS Neuron or Habana SynapseAI.

PROVIDER SPECIFIC ENDPOINT LEVEL OPTION

FI_OPT_EFA_RNR_RETRY: Defines the number of RNR retry. The application can use it to reset RNR retry counter via the call to fi_setopt. Note that this option must be set before the endpoint is enabled. Otherwise, the call will fail. Also note that this option only applies to RDM endpoint.
FI_OPT_EFA_EMULATED_READ, FI_OPT_EFA_EMULATED_WRITE, FI_OPT_EFA_EMULATED_ATOMICS - bool: These options only apply to the fi_getopt() call. They are used to query the EFA provider to determine if the endpoint is emulating Read, Write, and Atomic operations (return value is true), or if these operations are assisted by hardware support (return value is false).
FI_OPT_EFA_USE_DEVICE_RDMA - bool: Only available if the application selects a libfabric API version >= 1.18. This option allows an application to change libfabric’s behavior with respect to RDMA transfers. Note that there is also an environment variable FI_EFA_USE_DEVICE_RDMA which the user may set as well. If the environment variable and the argument provided with this variable are in conflict, then fi_setopt will return -FI_EINVAL, and the environment variable will be respected. If the hardware does not support RDMA and the argument is true, then fi_setopt will return -FI_EOPNOTSUPP. If the application uses API version < 1.18, the argument is ignored and fi_setopt returns -FI_ENOPROTOOPT. The default behavior for RDMA transfers depends on API version. For API >= 1.18 RDMA is enabled by default on any hardware which supports it. For API<1.18, RDMA is enabled by default only on certain newer hardware revisions.
FI_OPT_EFA_SENDRECV_IN_ORDER_ALIGNED_128_BYTES - bool: It is used to force the endpoint to use in-order send/recv operation for each 128 bytes aligned block. Enabling the option will guarantee data inside each 128 bytes aligned block being sent and received in order, it will also guarantee data to be delivered to the receive buffer only once. If endpoint is not able to support this feature, it will return -FI_EOPNOTSUPP for the call to fi_setopt().
FI_OPT_EFA_WRITE_IN_ORDER_ALIGNED_128_BYTES - bool: It is used to set the endpoint to use in-order RDMA write operation for each 128 bytes aligned block. Enabling the option will guarantee data inside each 128 bytes aligned block being written in order, it will also guarantee data to be delivered to the target buffer only once. If endpoint is not able to support this feature, it will return -FI_EOPNOTSUPP for the call to fi_setopt().

RUNTIME PARAMETERS

FI_EFA_TX_SIZE: Maximum number of transmit operations before the provider returns -FI_EAGAIN. For only the RDM endpoint, this parameter will cause transmit operations to be queued when this value is set higher than the default and the transmit queue is full.
FI_EFA_RX_SIZE: Maximum number of receive operations before the provider returns -FI_EAGAIN.
FI_EFA_TX_IOV_LIMIT: Maximum number of IOVs for a transmit operation.
FI_EFA_RX_IOV_LIMIT: Maximum number of IOVs for a receive operation.

RUNTIME PARAMETERS SPECIFIC TO RDM ENDPOINT

These OFI runtime parameters apply only to the RDM endpoint.

FI_EFA_RX_WINDOW_SIZE

Maximum number of MTU-sized messages that can be in flight from any single endpoint as part of long message data transfer.

FI_EFA_TX_QUEUE_SIZE

Depth of transmit queue opened with the NIC. This may not be set to a value greater than what the NIC supports.

FI_EFA_RECVWIN_SIZE

Size of out of order reorder buffer (in messages). Messages received out of this window will result in an error.

FI_EFA_CQ_SIZE

Size of any cq created, in number of entries.

FI_EFA_MR_CACHE_ENABLE

Enables using the mr cache and in-line registration instead of a bounce buffer for iov’s larger than max_memcpy_size. Defaults to true. When disabled, only uses a bounce buffer

FI_EFA_MR_MAX_CACHED_COUNT

Sets the maximum number of memory registrations that can be cached at any time.

FI_EFA_MR_MAX_CACHED_SIZE

Sets the maximum amount of memory that cached memory registrations can hold onto at any time.

FI_EFA_MAX_MEMCPY_SIZE

Threshold size switch between using memory copy into a pre-registered bounce buffer and memory registration on the user buffer.

FI_EFA_MTU_SIZE

Overrides the default MTU size of the device.

FI_EFA_RX_COPY_UNEXP

Enables the use of a separate pool of bounce-buffers to copy unexpected messages out of the pre-posted receive buffers.

FI_EFA_RX_COPY_OOO

Enables the use of a separate pool of bounce-buffers to copy out-of-order RTS packets out of the pre-posted receive buffers.

FI_EFA_MAX_TIMEOUT

Maximum timeout (us) for backoff to a peer after a receiver not ready error.

FI_EFA_TIMEOUT_INTERVAL

Time interval (us) for the base timeout to use for exponential backoff to a peer after a receiver not ready error.

FI_EFA_ENABLE_SHM_TRANSFER

Enable SHM provider to provide the communication across all intra-node processes. SHM transfer will be disabled in the case where ptrace protection is turned on. You can turn it off to enable shm transfer.

FI_EFA_SHM_AV_SIZE

Defines the maximum number of entries in SHM provider’s address vector.

FI_EFA_SHM_MAX_MEDIUM_SIZE

Defines the switch point between small/medium message and large message. The message larger than this switch point will be transferred with large message protocol. NOTE: This parameter is now deprecated.

FI_EFA_INTER_MAX_MEDIUM_MESSAGE_SIZE

The maximum size for inter EFA messages to be sent by using medium message protocol. Messages which can fit in one packet will be sent as eager message. Messages whose sizes are smaller than this value will be sent using medium message protocol. Other messages will be sent using CTS based long message protocol.

FI_EFA_FORK_SAFE

Enable fork() support. This may have a small performance impact and should only be set when required. Applications that require to register regions backed by huge pages and also require fork support are not supported.

FI_EFA_RUNT_SIZE

The maximum number of bytes that will be eagerly sent by inflight messages uses runting read message protocol (Default 307200).

FI_EFA_SET_CUDA_SYNC_MEMOPS

Set CU_POINTER_ATTRIBUTE_SYNC_MEMOPS for cuda ptr. (Default: 1)

FI_EFA_INTER_MIN_READ_MESSAGE_SIZE

The minimum message size in bytes for inter EFA read message protocol. If instance support RDMA read, messages whose size is larger than this value will be sent by read message protocol. (Default 1048576).

FI_EFA_INTER_MIN_READ_WRITE_SIZE

The mimimum message size for inter EFA write to use read write protocol. If firmware support RDMA read, and FI_EFA_USE_DEVICE_RDMA is 1, write requests whose size is larger than this value will use the read write protocol (Default 65536).

FI_EFA_USE_DEVICE_RDMA

Specify whether to require or ignore RDMA features of the EFA device.

When set to 1/true/yes/on, all RDMA features of the EFA device are used. But if EFA device does not support RDMA and FI_EFA_USE_DEVICE_RDMA is set to 1/true/yes/on, user’s application is aborted and a warning message is printed.
When set to 0/false/no/off, libfabric will emulate all fi_rma operations instead of offloading them to the EFA network device. Libfabric will not use device RDMA to implement send/receive operations.
If not set, RDMA operations will occur when available based on RDMA device ID/version.

fi_efa(7) Libfabric Programmer's Manual