RNIC-PI: The last step in standardizing RDMA

Abstract

The hardware-software interaction for the industry-standard remote direct memory access (RDMA) devices have only been defined as an abstract set of operations. While the abstract definition has allowed vendors to build RDMA adapters, the industry still lacks a generic software interface definition that hardware and system vendors can code to. This paper presents the industry-standard RDMA NIC Programming Interface (RNIC-PI) and its flexible architecture, the role it plays in the industry and the challenges encountered in reaching agreement on a common set of semantics that is acceptable to a variety of operating systems and RDMA NIC vendors. A vehicle to translate the interface into reality on Linux is described in the end along with some suggestions on future course of action