[dpdk-dev] DPDK techboard minutes @18/12/2019

[dpdk-dev] DPDK techboard minutes @18/12/2019

[Ananyev, Konstantin]

Minutes of Technical Board Meeting, 2019-12-18

Members Attending
-----------------
-Bruce
-Ferruh
-Hemant
-Honnappa
-Jerin
-Kevin  
-Konstantin (Chair)
-Maxime
-Olivier
-Stephen
-Thomas

NOTE: The technical board meetings every second Wednesday on IRC
channel  #dpdk-board, at 3pm UTC. Meetings are public and DPDK community
members are welcome to attend.

NOTE: Next meeting will be on Wednesday 2020-01-15 @3pm UTC, and will be
chaired by Maxime Coquelin

1) drivers/vdpa introduction discussion.
Currently, at dpdk.org we have only IFC vDPA driver available (located in drivers/net),
but more drivers are arriving (Mellanox, Virtio vDPA in v20.02).
Might be some others are expected in later releases.
Mellanox proposal is to introduce a new vDPA subsystem (drivers/vdpa),
and move code common to both net and vdpa PMDs to the drivers/common directory.
drivers/net/ifc will be moved entirely into drivers/vdpa/ifc
While it seems to provide better code layout for drivers in long run,
in short term it probably would need significant code refactoring for both mlx and virtio PMDs,
plus can cause some difficulties for stable release maintainers.

AR to Maxime (virtio) and Matan (mlx) to estimate how big code
refactoring will be required for such move.
AR to stable release maintainers (Kevin and Luca) to estimate impact
on stable releases.
Decision at next TB meeting based on provided estimations/feedback.

2) AR from Thomas to other TB members to submit missing notes for
previous TB meeting. 

3) AR for Thomas to add the approved email IDs to the security pre-release mailing list.
Reply from Thomas: done.
  
 

Re: [dpdk-dev] DPDK techboard minutes @18/12/2019

[Matan Azrad]

Hi

> From: Ananyev, Konstantin
> Minutes of Technical Board Meeting, 2019-12-18
> 
> Members Attending
> -----------------
> -Bruce
> -Ferruh
> -Hemant
> -Honnappa
> -Jerin
> -Kevin
> -Konstantin (Chair)
> -Maxime
> -Olivier
> -Stephen
> -Thomas
> 
> NOTE: The technical board meetings every second Wednesday on IRC
> channel  #dpdk-board, at 3pm UTC. Meetings are public and DPDK
> community members are welcome to attend.
> 
> NOTE: Next meeting will be on Wednesday 2020-01-15 @3pm UTC, and will
> be chaired by Maxime Coquelin
> 
> 1) drivers/vdpa introduction discussion.
> Currently, at dpdk.org we have only IFC vDPA driver available (located in
> drivers/net), but more drivers are arriving (Mellanox, Virtio vDPA in v20.02).
> Might be some others are expected in later releases.
> Mellanox proposal is to introduce a new vDPA subsystem (drivers/vdpa), and
> move code common to both net and vdpa PMDs to the drivers/common
> directory.
> drivers/net/ifc will be moved entirely into drivers/vdpa/ifc While it seems to
> provide better code layout for drivers in long run, in short term it probably
> would need significant code refactoring for both mlx and virtio PMDs, plus
> can cause some difficulties for stable release maintainers.
> 
> AR to Maxime (virtio) and Matan (mlx) to estimate how big code refactoring
> will be required for such move.

steps:
common/mlx5:
	Move glue and DevX mechanism(4 files) from net/mlx5 to common/mlx5.
	Move some shared functions\MACROs from net/mlx5 to common/mlx5.
	Mainly move code and files as is (even without names changing) and update build files accordingly.

After introducing the new vdpa class:
	Move IFC code and its docs to the new class directories(update build files accordingly).
	Locate the new Mellanox vDPA driver in this class.

The plan is to send the class introduction and the IFC moving this week.
Later on, to introduce the mlx5 common dir and the new Mellanox vDPA driver in the vdpa class - ~3 weeks.

> AR to stable release maintainers (Kevin and Luca) to estimate impact on
> stable releases.
> Decision at next TB meeting based on provided estimations/feedback.
> 
> 2) AR from Thomas to other TB members to submit missing notes for
> previous TB meeting.
> 
> 3) AR for Thomas to add the approved email IDs to the security pre-release
> mailing list.
> Reply from Thomas: done.
 

Re: [dpdk-dev] DPDK techboard minutes @18/12/2019

[Luca Boccassi]

On Fri, 2019-12-20 at 16:33 +0000, Ananyev, Konstantin wrote:
> Minutes of Technical Board Meeting, 2019-12-18
> 
> Members Attending
> -----------------
> -Bruce
> -Ferruh
> -Hemant
> -Honnappa
> -Jerin
> -Kevin  
> -Konstantin (Chair)
> -Maxime
> -Olivier
> -Stephen
> -Thomas
> 
> NOTE: The technical board meetings every second Wednesday on IRC
> channel  #dpdk-board, at 3pm UTC. Meetings are public and DPDK
> community
> members are welcome to attend.
> 
> NOTE: Next meeting will be on Wednesday 2020-01-15 @3pm UTC, and will
> be
> chaired by Maxime Coquelin
> 
> 1) drivers/vdpa introduction discussion.
> Currently, at dpdk.org we have only IFC vDPA driver available
> (located in drivers/net),
> but more drivers are arriving (Mellanox, Virtio vDPA in v20.02).
> Might be some others are expected in later releases.
> Mellanox proposal is to introduce a new vDPA subsystem
> (drivers/vdpa),
> and move code common to both net and vdpa PMDs to the drivers/common
> directory.
> drivers/net/ifc will be moved entirely into drivers/vdpa/ifc
> While it seems to provide better code layout for drivers in long run,
> in short term it probably would need significant code refactoring for
> both mlx and virtio PMDs,
> plus can cause some difficulties for stable release maintainers.
> 
> AR to Maxime (virtio) and Matan (mlx) to estimate how big code
> refactoring will be required for such move.
> AR to stable release maintainers (Kevin and Luca) to estimate impact
> on stable releases.
> Decision at next TB meeting based on provided estimations/feedback.

Hi,

At a glance, the impact will be more time consuming backports, as fewer
patches will "cleanly" backport and require manual work, which will
lead to fewer patches being integrated directly by ourselves. Are the
PMDs devs/maintainers willing/available to do extra work to help
backporting fixes?

-- 
Kind regards,
Luca Boccassi