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AIINFRA-008 in progress P1 curriculum networking Effort XL

Continue the active NIC course into RDMA, congestion, isolation, telemetry, and accelerator-oriented data paths.

Depends on: AIINFRA-002

Outcome

The NIC firmware course becomes the specialization’s data-plane track, connecting packet movement fundamentals to the network behavior and device responsibilities of distributed AI workloads.

Deliverables

  • Complete DMA, rings, interrupts/NAPI, ordering, multiqueue, RSS, NUMA, driver, and failure-analysis lessons.
  • Add RDMA queue pairs, completion queues, memory registration, protection, and verbs-to-hardware traces.
  • Teach congestion and loss behavior without reducing RoCE to a checklist of switch settings.
  • Cover SmartNIC/DPU management, isolation, update, and telemetry boundaries.

Acceptance criteria

  • A learner can trace a transfer from application memory through RNIC hardware and the fabric.
  • Host software, NIC firmware, programmable datapath, and network control responsibilities are distinct.
  • Performance claims are paired with measurements or reproducible experiments.
  • The track connects to PCIe, security, fleet update, and capstone tickets.

Notes

The first three NIC Firmware Engineering lessons are already published.