page out to the disk. This action—one of the few that involve the kernel—ties the page to physical memory. To ensure that only the process that owns the registered memory may access it, the VIA NICs require permission keys known as "protection tags" during communication. So essentially VIA is a standard that defines kernel bypassing and RDMA in a network. It also defines a programming library called "VIPL". It has been implemented, most notably in cLAN from Giganet (now Emulex). Mostly though, VIA's major contribution has been in providing a basis for the InfiniBand, iWARP and RoCE standards. External links Usenix Notes On VIA The Virtual Interface Architecture, a book from Intel How To Plan, Design & Optimize Enterprise Networks Virtual Interface Architecture Specification UML, cs520 Ada Gavrilovska, Attaining High Performance Communications: A Vertical Approach (CRC Press, , 2009), page 193 "8.2.4 RDMA Historical Foundations" Supercomputing Computer networks