On Mon, Mar 21, 2016 at 10:52 AM, Bruce Richardson <bruce.richardson at intel.com> wrote: > On Sun, Mar 20, 2016 at 08:18:57PM +0100, Thomas Monjalon wrote: >> 2016-03-20 14:17, Zhang, Helin: >> > From: Thomas Monjalon [mailto:thomas.monjalon at 6wind.com] >> > > 2016-03-18 10:16, Stephen Hemminger: >> > > > Right now, all those offload features are pretty much unusable in a >> > > > real product without lots and lots of extra codes and huge bug >> > > > surface. It bothers me enough that I would recommend removing much of >> > > > the >> > > filter/offload/ptype stuff from DPDK! >> > > >> > > One of the biggest challenge is to think about a good filtering API. >> > > The offloading has some interaction with the mbuf struct. >> > > >> > > I would like to suggest rewriting ethdev API by keeping it as is for >> > > some time for >> > > compatibility while creating a new one. What about the prefix >> > > dpdk_netdev_ to >> > > progressively replace rte_eth_dev? >> > >> > I totally agree with to add new and generic APIs for user applications. >> > But I don't >> > think we need to remove all current APIs. Generic APIs may not support all >> > advanced >> > hardware features, while specific APIs can. Why not support all? One >> > generic APIs for >> > common users, and others APIs for advanced users. >> >> Yes we cannot access to every features of a device through generic API. >> Until now we were trying to add an ethdev API for every features even if it >> is used by only one driver. >> I think we should allow a direct access to the driver by the applications and >> work on generic API only for common features. > > Definite +1. > I think that we need to start pushing driver-specific functionality to get > exposed > via a driver's header files. That allow users who want to extract the max > functionality from a particular NIC to do so via those APIs calls, while not > polluting the generic ethdev layer. >
What sort of requirements on ABI/API compatibility would this place on the drivers? I would hope that it would be treated like any other public API within DPDK. I don't think this would be too onerous, but it would require that the drivers be designed to deal with it. (I.e. don't just expose any old internal driver function). > On the other hand, I don't like the idea of dpdk_netdev. I think we can work > within the existing rte_eth_dev framework. > > /Bruce >
