How to VL implemented ?

Infrastructure & Networking Software And Drivers Mellanox OFED
1

Hello all

Simple question but I cant found answer. May be anybody know it ?

The documentation says that each VL has its own send/recv buffers.

Does this mean that when I using 1,2 or more VL, the buffers of the other unused VLs are idle(or not work) ?

Or are VL buffers is the shared resource that are shared between the VLs used?

I tried to test with 4 parallel tests (qperf rdma_rc_write).

Run 4 tests without indicating SL and 4 tests, where each qperf use its own SL (SL0-3).

I did not found any performance differences.

Who will explain whether there can be a difference ?

Or how the VL buffers is implemented at the hardware level ?

2

Hello

I read this article. Good article. But I want to clarify. Is VL have dedicated buffers or its like shared register file with ranges between VLs. Is VL buffers idle if I use only 1 VL ?

Now I think I found Indirect answer about this in presentation [1] (slide 37, 4.2 Study of switch buffer size).

In this presentation study dedicated VLs buffers. Its give me indirect answer that each VLs have dedicated/own buffers and that is I use one SL/VL than others VL is Idle.

Thanks all

REFERENCE

1 Analyzing InfiniBand Packets https://www.openfabrics.org/images/eventpresos/workshops2015/UGWorkshop/Thursday/thursday_09.pdf https://www.openfabrics.org/images/eventpresos/workshops2015/UGWorkshop/Thursday/thursday_09.pdf

3

Quick answer to your question: Yes. VL has a dedicated/pre-allocated buffers.

4

Yes

5

Hi Serge,

You can consult this document which explain in details the concept of SL/VL & QOS (QoS Architecture) based on our IB Spec.

http://www.mellanox.com/pdf/whitepapers/deploying_qos_wp_10_19_2005.pdf http://www.mellanox.com/pdf/whitepapers/deploying_qos_wp_10_19_2005.pdf

Our Mellanox OFED UM has a section as well on QoS Architecture (Quality Of Service).

By default, all traffic is being sent to SL0 (one buffer) if QOS is not being implemented.

Regards,

Sophie.