From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from an.kaist.ac.kr (an.kaist.ac.kr [143.248.48.110]) by dpdk.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0E04A69C8 for ; Wed, 7 Oct 2015 15:30:46 +0200 (CEST) Received: from mail-vk0-f41.google.com (mail-vk0-f41.google.com [209.85.213.41]) by an.kaist.ac.kr (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id DC39436202AB for ; Wed, 7 Oct 2015 22:30:47 +0900 (KST) Received: by vkgd64 with SMTP id d64so10898811vkg.0 for ; Wed, 07 Oct 2015 06:30:40 -0700 (PDT) X-Received: by 10.31.135.1 with SMTP id j1mr979873vkd.73.1444224640708; Wed, 07 Oct 2015 06:30:40 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <1444067692-29645-1-git-send-email-adrien.mazarguil@6wind.com> <20151006095416.55a16e0c@uryu.home.lan> In-Reply-To: <20151006095416.55a16e0c@uryu.home.lan> From: Joongi Kim Date: Wed, 07 Oct 2015 13:30:30 +0000 Message-ID: To: Stephen Hemminger , Adrien Mazarguil Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Content-Filtered-By: Mailman/MimeDel 2.1.15 Cc: dev@dpdk.org Subject: Re: [dpdk-dev] [PATCH 00/17] Enhance mlx5 with Mellanox OFED 3.1 X-BeenThere: dev@dpdk.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.15 Precedence: list List-Id: patches and discussions about DPDK List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 07 Oct 2015 13:30:46 -0000 My laboratory (an.kaist.ac.kr) had tried to build a native kernel driver for mlx4 a few months ago, and sent the full patch to the patchwork system: http://dpdk.org/dev/patchwork/patch/6128/ This driver supports only minimal RX/TX of packets, and many standard features such as VLAN are missing. The major technical difficulty was to make a memory region that is persistent even when the user process terminates. We have sent another patch for this: http://dpdk.org/dev/patchwork/patch/6127/ Nonetheless, we abandoned this approach, because the new mlx4 PMD based on OFED 3.0 performed almost same or better than our native driver with an almost complete feature set. Still, I believe that there are rooms to improve/optimize the native driver but we just do not have enough human resources for that. In background, we tried to publish a academic paper about an automated convertor from Linux NIC drivers to DPDK poll-mode drivers, but unfortunately this project is being hold back now. Regards, Joongi 2015=EB=85=84 10=EC=9B=94 6=EC=9D=BC (=ED=99=94) =EC=98=A4=ED=9B=84 5:54, S= tephen Hemminger =EB=8B=98=EC=9D=B4 =EC=9E=91=EC=84=B1: > On Mon, 5 Oct 2015 19:54:35 +0200 > Adrien Mazarguil wrote: > > > Mellanox OFED 3.1 [1] comes with improved APIs that Mellanox ConnectX-4 > > (mlx5) adapters can take advantage of, such as: > > > > - Separate post and doorbell operations on all queues. > > - Lightweight RX queues called Work Queues (WQs). > > - Low-level RSS indirection table and hash key configuration. > > > > This patchset enhances mlx5 with all of these for better performance an= d > > flexibility. Documentation is updated accordingly. > > Has anybody explored doing a driver without the dependency on OFED? > It is certainly possible. The Linux kernel drivers don't depend on it. > And dropping OFED would certainly be faster. >