Re: [PATCH v10 00/20] dlb: introduce DLB device driver

On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 1:02 AM Greg KH [off-list ref] wrote:

On Wed, Feb 10, 2021 at 11:54:03AM -0600, Mike Ximing Chen wrote:

quoted

Intel DLB is an accelerator for the event-driven programming model of
DPDK's Event Device Library[2]. The library is used in packet processing
pipelines that arrange for multi-core scalability, dynamic load-balancing,
and variety of packet distribution and synchronization schemes

The more that I look at this driver, the more I think this is a "run
around" the networking stack.  Why are you all adding kernel code to
support DPDK which is an out-of-kernel networking stack?  We can't
support that at all.

Why not just use the normal networking functionality instead of this
custom char-device-node-monstrosity?

Hey Greg,

I've come to find out that this driver does not bypass kernel
networking, and the kernel functionality I thought it bypassed, IPC /
Scheduling, is not even in the picture in the non-accelerated case. So
given you and I are both confused by this submission that tells me
that the problem space needs to be clarified and assumptions need to
be enumerated.

What is missing from todays kernel networking code that requires this
run-around?

Yes, first and foremost Mike, what are the kernel infrastructure gaps
and pain points that led up to this proposal?