Re: [dpdk-dev] Napatech pmd

[Michael Lilja <ml@napatech.com>]

Hi,

I appreciate the discussion. It would of course be nice if vendors could be allowed to use external libraries/drivers and have a DPDK shim but I also understand the concern.

We have started the movement towards an open source variant of our NICs driver so that upstreaming to DPDK (and kernel) will be possible. The downside is that not all NICs will be supported, it is simply not worth the effort rewriting a legacy codebase.

Thanks,
Michael

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Thomas Monjalon <thomas@monjalon.net>
> Sent: 31. marts 2020 14:29
> To: Neil Horman <nhorman@tuxdriver.com>
> Cc: Finn Christensen <fc@napatech.com>; dev@dpdk.org; Bent Kuhre
> <bk@napatech.com>; Michael Lilja <ml@napatech.com>; techboard@dpdk.org
> Subject: Re: [dpdk-dev] Napatech pmd
> 
> 31/03/2020 14:17, Neil Horman:
> > On Tue, Mar 31, 2020 at 01:25:25PM +0200, Thomas Monjalon wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > Raising this topic again.
> > >
> > > As said in the past, it is better to have this PMD inside DPDK.
> > > We discussed some concerns, but I think the consensus was to
> > > integrate Napatech PMD anyway.
> > >
> > > I am sad that you did not feel welcome enough to follow up with
> > > patches during all these years.
> > > Please would you like to restart the upstreaming process?
> > >
> > Whats changed here?
> 
> Nothing changed, except years.
> 
> > I still don't see what the advantage is to accepting this code in
> the DPDK tree.
> > No one will be able to use it without accepting Napatechs license
> for
> > their underlying library.  As such, the code can't really be
> > maintained at all by anyone other than Napatech in the community,
> and
> > so may as well just be maintained as an out of tree driver.
> 
> You are the only one having this concern.
> Nobody from the Technical Board looks to be against the acceptance.
> 
> The advantage is simple: Napatech customers will be able to run any
> DPDK version.
> 
> 
> > > 08/01/2018 14:08, Finn Christensen:
> > > > Hi Thomas,
> > > >
> > > > Thanks for bringing this discussion up again.
> > > >
> > > > The Napatech PMD is build on top of our proprietary driver. The
> reason is basically that we utilize many years of driver development
> and thus reuses the FPGA controlling code in the DPDK PMD. The
> Napatech driver suite is still closed source.
> > > > The current NTNIC PMD dynamically links a Napatech proprietary
> NTAPI library to control the FPGA on our NICs.
> > > >
> > > > We did think of the PMD as being our responsibility to keep
> updated towards the Napatech NIC communication, and that we would be
> engaged and asked to modify accordingly if changes in DPDK required
> that (maintainer). Furthermore, the PMD compiles with no issues, when
> NTNIC is enabled.
> > > > We have plans to write a stand-alone PMD, but this is not a
> small task to do, therefore we haven't got to that yet.
> > > >
> > > > If the DPDK community would accept the dynamic linking to a
> proprietary library, from inside our PMD, then it would be great.
> > > >
> > > > Let me know what you think. Or maybe you have ideas to what else
> we could do to make it upstream.
> > > >
> > > > Thanks,
> > > > Finn
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > >-----Original Message-----
> > > > >From: Thomas Monjalon [mailto:thomas@monjalon.net]
> > > > >Sent: 5. januar 2018 16:34
> > > > >To: Finn Christensen <fc@napatech.com>
> > > > >Subject: Re: [dpdk-dev] standardize device identification
> > > > >
> > > > >It leads to a totally different question:
> > > > >Can we discuss again how to integrate your driver in DPDK
> upstream?
> > > > >Please explain again your situation in a new thread.
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> 
> 
> 
>