Our engineering staff indicate that it is not rare for
devices to
perform transfer operations that do not align with block
boundaries.
To our knowledge, most devices have already elected to deal
with
this characteristic, whether it is pretty or
not.
At this point, I believe that interoperability problems may
occur
if block alignment is made a
requirement.
Bob Snively
As far as
I have been able to tell, our collection of standards permit a
transfer ready to be issued by a block device for an amount of data not a
multiple of the block size. This causes serious extra complexity in the
design of devices that support concurrent use of DIF and any kind of
cryptographic security.
Are there members of
this distribution that know that non-block-bounded transfer ready
is being done? (This is only a check for existence. Do not identify the
product if you prefer not to.)
Are there members of
this distribution willing to describe a noteworthy advantage to doing it?
How about for doing it efficiently?
Thanks in
advance!
- bob
nixon, Emulex