_CORE is a bit unusual for a driver. CORE is generally a library which
is shared by a number of drivers. It does not have a tristate string,
it is just selected by the drivers which need it.

Thank you for your feedback on the NBL_CORE configuration option. We appreciate
your guidance on adhering to Linux kernel naming conventions.

Why NBL_CORE?
The driver is designed to support two distinct functionalities for the
Nebula-matrix m18100 Ethernet controller:

1.Standard Ethernet/NIC functionality (via the main driver module).
2.Auxiliary device (auxiliary driver) for RDMA (exposed through auxiliary_device).
4.MDEV-based SR-IOV/VF emulation (for native device splitting).
Since shared logic (e.g., PCIe resource management, MMIO access, interrupt
handling, and common hardware abstractions) is required across both the main
driver and auxiliary/RDMA driver, we opted for a _CORE suffix to indicate:

Reusability: The module provides foundational code used by multiple sub-drivers
(main NIC + auxiliary RDMA).
Modularity: Future extensions (e.g., additional auxiliary devices) can reuse the
same core infrastructure.
So it serves a similar purpose to mlx5_core (Mellanox), where a central module
handles hardware-specific operations for multiple sub-drivers.

illusion.wang



------------------------------------------------------------------
发件人：Andrew Lunn [off-list ref]
发送时间：2026年1月23日(周五) 11:27
收件人：Illusion Wang[off-list ref]; y[off-list ref]
抄　送：Dimon[off-list ref]; Alvin[off-list ref]; Sam[off-list ref]; netdev[off-list ref]; "andrew+netdev"[off-list ref]; corbet[off-list ref]; kuba[off-list ref]; "linux-doc"[off-list ref]; lorenzo[off-list ref]; pabeni[off-list ref]; horms[off-list ref]; "vadim.fedorenko"[off-list ref]; "lukas.bulwahn"[off-list ref]; hawk[off-list ref]; ast[off-list ref]; bpf[off-list ref]; sdf[off-list ref]; daniel[off-list ref]; "john.fastabend"[off-list ref]; edumazet[off-list ref]; open list[off-list ref]
主　题：Re: [PATCH v3 net-next 01/15] net/nebula-matrix: add minimum nbl build framework

+config NBL_CORE
+    tristate "Nebula-matrix Ethernet Controller m18100 Family support"
+    depends on 64BIT && PCI
+    default m
+    select PAGE_POOL
+    help
+      This driver supports Nebula-matrix Ethernet Controller m18100 Family of
+      devices.  For more information about this product, go to the product
+      description with smart NIC:

_CORE is a bit unusual for a driver. CORE is generally a library which
is shared by a number of drivers. It does not have a tristate string,
it is just selected by the drivers which need it.

+static int nbl_probe(struct pci_dev *pdev,
+       const struct pci_device_id __always_unused *id)
+{
+ struct device *dev = &pdev->dev;
+
+ dev_dbg(dev, "nbl probe ok!\n");

Please don't have pointless debug messages. If your driver does not
even probe, you should not be submitting it.

+ return 0;
+}
+
+static void nbl_remove(struct pci_dev *pdev)
+{
+ dev_dbg(&pdev->dev, "nbl remove OK!\n");
+}
+
+#define NBL_VENDOR_ID   (0x1F0F)

    Andrew

---
pw-bot: cr