System and method for providing an infiniband network device having a vendor-specific attribute that contains a signature of the vendor in a high-performance computing environment

A system for providing an InfiniBand network device having a vendor-specific attribute that contains a signature of the vendor, comprising:

• an InfiniBand compatible network device, including a processor and a memory;
• a subnet management attribute, wherein the subnet management attribute has an attribute identifier in the range of attribute identifiers reserved in the InfiniBand specification, wherein the subnet management attribute comprises a predefined, fixed number of bits, and wherein the subnet management attribute is stored in the memory of the InfiniBand compatible network device as an attribute of the InfiniBand compatible network device;
• a signature bit string contained in the attribute, wherein the signature bit string is a predefined, fixed number of bits in length, and wherein the signature bit string represents a unique identifier of a vendor;
• a defined number of offset bits, wherein the number of offset bits indicates the start of the signature bit string within the attribute;
• and
• wherein the subnet management attribute is configured with the signature bit string starting where the offset bits indicate.

A non-transitory computer readable storage medium, including instructions stored thereon for providing a vendor-specific attribute that contains a signature of the vendor for an InfiniBand network device, which when read and executed by one or more computers cause the one or more computers to perform steps comprising:

• providing a subnet management attribute,
• wherein the subnet management attribute has an attribute identifier in the range of attribute identifiers reserved in the InfiniBand specification,
• wherein the subnet management attribute has a signature bit string that is a fixed number of bits in length,
• wherein the signature bit string represents a unique identifier of the vendor,
• wherein the subnet management attribute has a number of offset bits, and
• wherein the number of offset bits indicates the start of the signature bit string within the attribute;
• configuring the subnet management attribute with the signature bit string starting where the offset bits indicate;
• and
• storing the subnet management attribute in a memory of an InfiniBand compatible network device as an attribute of the InfiniBand compatible network device.