DPDK patches and discussions
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
* [dpdk-dev] memory allocation requirements
@ 2016-04-13 16:03 Thomas Monjalon
  2016-04-13 17:00 ` Wiles, Keith
                   ` (3 more replies)
  0 siblings, 4 replies; 8+ messages in thread
From: Thomas Monjalon @ 2016-04-13 16:03 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: sergio.gonzalez.monroy; +Cc: dev

After looking at the patches for container support, it appears that
some changes are needed in the memory management:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.networking.dpdk.devel/32786/focus=32788

I think it is time to collect what are the needs and expectations of
the DPDK memory allocator. The goal is to satisfy every needs while
cleaning the API.
Here is a first try to start the discussion.

The memory allocator has 2 classes of API in DPDK.
First the user/application allows or requires DPDK to take over some
memory resources of the system. The characteristics can be:
	- numa node
	- page size
	- swappable or not
	- contiguous (cannot be guaranteed) or not
	- physical address (as root only)
Then the drivers or other libraries use the memory through
	- rte_malloc
	- rte_memzone
	- rte_mempool
I think we can integrate the characteristics of the requested memory
in rte_malloc. Then rte_memzone would be only a named rte_malloc.
The rte_mempool still focus on collection of objects with cache.

If a rework happens, maybe that the build options CONFIG_RTE_LIBRTE_IVSHMEM
and CONFIG_RTE_EAL_SINGLE_FILE_SEGMENTS can be removed.
The Xen support should also be better integrated.

Currently, the first class of API is directly implemented as command line
parameters. Please let's think of C functions first.
The EAL parameters should simply wrap some API functions and let the
applications tune the memory initialization with a well documented API.

Probably that I forget some needs, e.g. for the secondary processes.
Please comment.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2016-05-18 10:28 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 8+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2016-04-13 16:03 [dpdk-dev] memory allocation requirements Thomas Monjalon
2016-04-13 17:00 ` Wiles, Keith
2016-04-14  8:48 ` Sergio Gonzalez Monroy
2016-04-14 14:46 ` Olivier MATZ
2016-04-14 15:39   ` Sergio Gonzalez Monroy
2016-04-15  7:12     ` Olivier Matz
2016-04-15  8:47       ` Sergio Gonzalez Monroy
2016-05-18 10:28 ` Alejandro Lucero

This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).