This is an improvement to support OFED-3.2, 3.3, .. with Lustre.
The right now, OFED is moving forward new structure (compat-rdma). The new approach is OFED based on the linux kernel + backports for less kernel revision and few distributions. (RHEL6.2, SLES11SP2, etc.) Here is detail.
http://lists.openfabrics.org/pipermail/ewg/2012-February/017303.html

The benefits are that we can use the lustre with latest Infiniband codes (contains improvements, new features and bug fixes) for the clients and servers. It's not only for the lustre itself, but also we can get improvements for IPoIB, SRP, etc..