AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The OpenFabrics Alliance (OFA) today announced the creation of the OpenFramework Working Group (OFWG). Guided by the OFA’s proven understanding of I/O, the OFWG will be designing a software framework enabling an application to easily access I/O services appropriate to its needs. The objectives of this “application-centric” approach are to maximize performance for more classes of applications, including storage and filesystem applications, message passing architectures and shared memory designs among others, and to maximize the return on investment being made in computer systems by their owners and operators.
Recognizing that neither the design of computer systems nor the ways in which they are used are static targets, the OFWG was explicitly created to apply application-centric I/O design principles to address these constantly moving targets. The resulting open source framework extends the art and science of high performance I/O to an expanding list of applications with the flexibility to support future classes of applications. The framework aims to support a compact set of well-defined interfaces that are responsive to different application programming requirements, including the continued support for verbs and RDMA-based I/O services.
“Verbs and RDMA-based networks will continue to be important focus areas, but with the new OFWG, the OFA is expanding its focus to include additional application-centric APIs that could be better suited to other areas and technologies,” said Jim Ryan, chairman, OFA. “Application-centric I/O is an extension of the approach historically taken by the OFA, and we will use our expertise in this area to guide the open source development of APIs and I/O libraries.”
The success of this application-centric approach is highly dependent on a close association with application developers, compiler architects, system users and others who can offer a clear view of application I/O requirements. To that end, the OFA is actively encouraging participation from these communities in this new working group, regardless of OFA membership status. The OFWG framework will accommodate code contributions from the open community in the form of new fabric interfaces and I/O services, which will continually grow and develop over time. To subscribe to the OFWG mailing list, click here. If you’d like to be involved in the OFWG, join as an OFA member now!
About the OpenFabrics Alliance
The OpenFabrics Alliance (OFA) is a 501(c)(6) non-profit company that develops, tests, licenses and distributes the OpenFabrics Software (OFS) – multi-platform, high-performance, low-latency and energy-efficient open-source RDMA software. OpenFabrics Software is used in business, operational, research and scientific infrastructures that require fast fabrics/networks, efficient storage and low-latency computing. OFS is free and is included in major Linux distributions, as well as Microsoft Windows Server 2012. In addition to developing and supporting this RDMA software, the Alliance delivers training, workshops and interoperability testing to ensure all releases meet multivendor enterprise requirements for security, reliability and efficiency. For more information about the OFA, visit www.openfabrics.org.
