Re: [dpdk-dev] [PATCH 4/4] ethdev: add helpers to move to the new offloads API

[Thomas Monjalon <thomas@monjalon.net>]

13/09/2017 13:16, Shahaf Shuler:
> Wednesday, September 13, 2017 12:28 PM, Thomas Monjalon:
> > I still think we must streamline ethdev API instead of complexifying.
> > We should drop the big "configure everything" and configure offloads one by
> > one, and per queue (the finer grain).
> 
> The issue is, that there is some functionality which cannot be achieved when configuring offload per queue.
> For example - vlan filter on intel NICs. The PF can set it even without creating a single queue, in order to enable it for the VFs.

As it is a device-specific - not documented - side effect,
I won't consider it.
However I understand it may be better to be able to configure
per-port offloads with a dedicated per-port function.
I agree with the approach of the v3 of this series.

Let me give my overview of offloads:

We have simple offloads which are configured by just setting a flag.
The same flag can be set per-port or per-queue.
This offload can be set before starting or on the fly.
We currently have no generic way to set it on the fly.

We have also more complicate offloads which require more configuration.
They are set with the rte_flow API.
They can be per-port, per-queue, on the fly or not (AFAIK).

I think we must discuss "on the fly" capability.
It requires probably to set up simple offloads (flags) with a dedicated
function instead of using "configure" and "queue_setup" functions.
This new capability can be implemented in a different series.

Opinions?