Subject: 53rd IETF - RDMA over the Internet Protocol Suite BOF (roi)

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 07 Mar 2002 10:09:14 -0500

RDMA over the Internet Protocol Suite BOF (roi)

Tuesday, March 19 at 1300-1400
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CHAIRS: Stephen Bailey <[email-masked]>
        Allyn Romanow <[email-masked]>

DESCRIPTION

This BOF will consider the problem being addressed by the proposed
RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access) over IP working group, and also
consider a charter for it.

At high speeds (today 1 Gbits/s and higher), copying in network
I/O typically causes high system costs in end-hosts.  This problem is
ultimately attributable to the high cost of memory bandwidth relative
to both CPU and network bandwidths.  The problem can be substantially
improved using "copy avoidance."

RDMA is a technology that allows the network adapter, under control of
the application, to place data directly into and out of application
buffers. This capability is also referred to as "direct data
placement". Special purpose memory-to-memory fabrics have been
developed and RDMA is widely used by databases and other
networked applications sensitive to overhead. The relatively higher
overhead of TCP/IP has so far prevented it from being similarly used
as such an interconnect.

High costs associated with copying is an issue primarily for large
scale systems, typically for servers in data centers.  An IP-based
solution developed within the IETF is desirable for interoperability
of various network fabrics. In addition it is especially important for
the standardization to be directed by the IETF because interconnection
technology will soon move out of a "back room" data center and start
to be used over the wide area in the Internet.

AGENDA

Agenda Bashing
Discussion of Problem Statement
Discussion of Proposed Charter

DOCS

RDMA Over IP Problem Statement:
  http://ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-romanow-rdma-over-ip-problem-statement-00.txt

Proposed RDMA over IP (ROI) Working Group Charter:
  http://www.cs.uchicago.edu/~steph/roi-proposed-charter-00.txt