On Tue, 2013-08-13 at 14:43 +0200, Pavel Machek wrote:

Hi!

quoted

Since it is a PCIe card, it does not have the ability to host hardware
devices for networking, storage and console. We provide these devices
on X100 coprocessors thus enabling a self-bootable equivalent environment
for applications. A key benefit of our solution is that it leverages
the standard virtio framework for network, disk and console devices,
though in our case the virtio framework is used across a PCIe bus.

Interesting...

quoted

 Documentation/mic/mic_overview.txt   |   48 +
 Documentation/mic/mpssd/.gitignore   |    1 +
 Documentation/mic/mpssd/Makefile     |   20 +
 Documentation/mic/mpssd/micctrl      |  157 +++
 Documentation/mic/mpssd/mpss         |  246 +++++
 Documentation/mic/mpssd/mpssd.c      | 1732 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 Documentation/mic/mpssd/mpssd.h      |  105 +++
 Documentation/mic/mpssd/sysfs.c      |  108 +++
 drivers/misc/Kconfig                 |    1 +
 drivers/misc/Makefile                |    1 +
 drivers/misc/mic/Kconfig             |   56 ++
 drivers/misc/mic/Makefile            |    6 +
 drivers/misc/mic/card/Makefile       |   11 +
 drivers/misc/mic/card/mic_common.h   |   43 +
 drivers/misc/mic/card/mic_debugfs.c  |  139 +++
 drivers/misc/mic/card/mic_debugfs.h  |   40 +
 drivers/misc/mic/card/mic_device.c   |  311 ++++++
 drivers/misc/mic/card/mic_device.h   |  106 +++
 drivers/misc/mic/card/mic_virtio.c   |  643 +++++++++++++
 drivers/misc/mic/card/mic_virtio.h   |   79 ++
 drivers/misc/mic/card/mic_x100.c     |  253 +++++
 drivers/misc/mic/card/mic_x100.h     |   53 ++
 drivers/misc/mic/common/mic_device.h |   85 ++
 drivers/misc/mic/host/Makefile       |   13 +
 drivers/misc/mic/host/mic_boot.c     |  181 ++++

So... there are basically separate computers running on PCIe card
plugged into host computer, right?

They are PCIe form factor Coprocessors plugged into the host.

Maybe we should have something more promintent than drivers/misc for
this, then? Like drivers/multicomputer?

multicomputer" is an interesting name for these kind of devices but has
several issues:
a) The definition I found for multicomputer online was "A computer made
up of several computers. The term generally refers to an architecture in
which each processor has its own memory rather than multiple processors
with a shared memory. A multicore computer, although it sounds similar,
would not be a multicomputer because the multiple cores share a common
memory." Intel MIC X100 devices typically have upto 244 CPUs (61 cores)
on the card sharing common card memory so multicomputer would not be
accurate based on this definition.
b) X100 MIC devices have always been referred to Coprocessors and never
as multicomputers in product specifications @
http://software.intel.com/en-us/mic-developer
c) multicomputer is a very long path name.

Given these issues, we would like to stick to drivers/misc/mic/ unless
you have objections to this approach.

Thanks for the feedback.
Sudeep Dutt

									Pavel