fi_verbs(7) Libfabric Programmer's Manual
NAME
The Verbs Fabric Provider
OVERVIEW
The verbs provider enables applications using OFI to be run over any verbs hardware (Infiniband, iWarp, etc). It uses the Linux Verbs API for network transport and provides a translation of OFI calls to appropriate verbs API calls. It uses librdmacm for communication management and libibverbs for other control and data transfer operations.
SUPPORTED FEATURES
The verbs provider supports a subset of OFI features.
- Endpoint types
- FI_EP_MSG, FI_EP_RDM (Experimental support for only FI_TAGGED interface).
- Endpoint capabilities
- FI_MSG, FI_RMA, FI_ATOMIC.
- Modes
- Verbs provider requires applications to support the following modes:
- FI_LOCAL_MR for all applications.
- FI_RX_CQ_DATA for applications that want to use RMA. Applications must take responsibility of posting receives for any incoming CQ data.
- FI_CONTEXT for applications making uses of the experimental FI_EP_RDM capability.
- Progress
- Verbs provider supports FI_PROGRESS_AUTO: Asynchronous operations make forward progress automatically.
- Operation flags
- Verbs provider supports FI_INJECT, FI_COMPLETION, FI_REMOTE_CQ_DATA.
- Msg Ordering
- Verbs provider support the following messaging ordering on the TX side:
- Read after Read
- Read after Write
- Read after Send
- Write after Write
- Write after Send
- Send after Write
- Send after Send
UNSUPPORTED FEATURES
- Control Interfaces
- Counters and address vectors are not supported.
- Data transfer interfaces
- Multi-receive is not supported.
- Endpoint features
- Scalable endpoints and shared contexts are not supported. fi_cancel, fi_tx/rx_size_left and fi_alias operations are not supported.
- Others
- Other unsupported features include resource management, polling.
LIMITATIONS
- CQ
- cq_readfrom operations are not supported.
- Memory Regions
- Adding regions via s/g list is not supported. Generic fi_mr_regattr is not supported. No support for binding memory regions to a counter.
- Wait objects
- Only FI_WAIT_FD wait object is supported. Wait sets are not supported.