Re: [PATCH 14/18] virtio: add api for delayed callbacks

From
Michael S. Tsirkin <hidden>
Date
2011-05-19 07:24:41
Also in
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Reply to
Rusty Russell, 2011-05-17
On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 04:43:21PM +0930, Rusty Russell wrote:
On Sun, 15 May 2011 15:48:18 +0300, "Michael S. Tsirkin" [off-list ref] wrote:
quoted
On Mon, May 09, 2011 at 03:27:33PM +0930, Rusty Russell wrote:
quoted
On Wed, 4 May 2011 23:52:33 +0300, "Michael S. Tsirkin" [off-list ref] wrote:
quoted
Add an API that tells the other side that callbacks
should be delayed until a lot of work has been done.
Implement using the new used_event feature.
Since you're going to add a capacity query anyway, why not add the
threshold argument here?
I thought that if we keep the API kind of generic
there might be more of a chance that future transports
will be able to implement it. For example, with an
old host we can't commit to a specific index.
No, it's always a hint anyway: you can be notified before the threshold
is reached.  But best make it explicit I think.

Cheers,
Rusty.

I tried doing that and remembered the real reason I went for this API:

capacity is limited by descriptor table space, not
used ring space: each entry in the used ring frees up multiple entries
in the descriptor ring. Thus the ring can't provide
callback after capacity is N: capacity is only available
after we get bufs.

We could try and make the API pass in the number of freed bufs, however:
- this is not really what virtio-net cares about (it cares about
  capacity)
- if the driver passes a number > number of outstanding bufs, it will
  never get a callback. So to stay correct the driver will need to
  track number of outstanding requests. The simpler API avoids that. 


APIs are easy to change so I'm guessing it's not a major blocker:
we can change later when e.g. block tries to
pass in some kind of extra hint: we'll be smarter
about how this API can change then.

Right?

-- 
MST
Thread (51 messages) 51 messages, 5 authors, 2011-05-20
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