Re: InfiniBand BOF @ LSM - topics of interest

Stephen Hemminger
2002-05-15T16:35:04Z

On Tue, 2002-05-14 at 22:01, Pete Zaitcev wrote:

> The thing about Infiniband is that its scope is so great.
> If you consider Infiniband was only a glorified PCI with serial
> connector, the congestion control is not an issue. Credits
> are quite sufficient to provide per link flow control, and
> everything would work nicely with a couple of switches.
> Such was the original plan, anyways, but somehow cluster
> ninjas managed to hijack the spec and we have the rabid
> overengineering running amok. In fact, they ran so far
> that Intel jumped ship and created PCI Express, and we
> have discussions about congestion control. Sad, really...
>
> -- Pete
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This sounds like deja vu all over again.
Each new interconnect technology like ATM seems to go through the cycle:

Assert: all other network protocols are crap
Deny: history
Assert: our problem is different, therefore we must
reinvent everything from data transfer up to applications

Reality strikes!

New technology ends up being used with standard applications and
protocols.