Re: [net-next patch v2] bnx2x: Add run-time CNIC support

On Tue, 2012-07-10 at 05:21 -0700, David Miller wrote:

From: "Merav Sicron" <redacted>
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2012 15:17:00 +0300

quoted

There are still two advantages in disabling CNIC in bnx2x: Saving
resources (MSI-X vector and memory) as well as reducing some latency.

But, nobody does this.  No end user can do this easily, this
is therefore of zero value to him.

Most do not, but I'm aware of two customers that play with their own
kernel that do that - they can play with the driver and tweak it to
disable this mode manually, but that is similar to supporting something
outside the tree.

quoted

While it is true that distributions enable the CNIC Kconfig option, some
users that care about resources and latency compile a kernel without it.

This, therefore, results in a terrible user experience.

We are using the Kconfig since it is meant for advanced users that
customize their kernel to their needs.

quoted

Can you please re-consider this patch?

Absolutely not.

Make it really dynamic, and properly configurable at run time, so
people don't have to go through hoops to get the "advantages" you
speak so highly of.

This is possible for the resources, but not for the latency - we cannot
change the HW mode once traffic started to run. Why is that so bad to
support Kconfig as a working mode like we did thus far? We are using it
specifically for users that wants to optimize the kernel, so Kconfig
does not sound that bad in that context.