Implementation and design analysis of a network messaging module using virtual interface architecture

The buffered message interface (BMI) of PVFSv2 is a low level network abstraction that allows PVFSv2 to operate on any protocol that has BMI support. This work presents a BMI module that supports the VIA over an early release version of InfiniBand and also over Myrinet. The baseline bandwidth and latency of the implementation were compared to the BMI modules and were shown to achieve significantly higher performance than the TCP module, but slightly less than the CM module. Experimental results comparing a completion queue version with a notify version and using immediate versus rendezvous messages are useful to system implementors of network messaging modules.

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