The goals of the M-VIA project are itemized below. They are not listed in order of importance, as all of the goals are considered equally important.

• Open Source

  M-VIA should be distributed as open source, allowing end users to make corrections and enhancements to the system.

• Full Conformance implementation

  M-VIA should provide a Full Conformance implementation as defined by the Intel Virtual Interface Architecture Developer's Guide.

  M-VIA should pass the Intel VI Conformance Suite when tested at Full Conformance.

• RDMA Read

  M-VIA should provide RDMA Read support

  Note, RDMA Write is required for Early Adopter and is implicit in the goal of providing a Full Conformance implementation.

• Rapid development of new VIA devices

  M-VIA should provide a common framework for the development of new M-VIA devices, promoting source code reuse for new VI NIC implementations.

• Common VI Provider Library

  M-VIA should use a common VI Provider Library for all devices in the system, enabling a VI application to use VI NICs from multiple vendors simultaneously.

• High-performance

  The use of a common VI Provider Library and framework for development of new VI NIC implementations should impact performance as little as possible.

• Robust, production quality

  M-VIA should be designed and implemented with the thought that it will be used in a production environment.

• Co-exist with traditional network protocols

  M-VIA devices should have the capability of providing both VIA and traditional network interfaces. It should be possible to run traditional protocols such as TCP/IP and VIA simultaneously over a single interface.

• Thread Safe

  Co-exist with native thread library and provide thread safe VI operations.

• Do not require recompilation of kernel

  M-VIA should be installable without recompiling the operating system kernel.

• Provide a mechanism for development of proprietary drivers

  M-VIA should provide the capability for commercial hardware vendors to distribute binary modules for their hardware without requiring end users to compile source code to utilize the vendor's device.