Re: [dpdk-dev] [PATCH 0/4] New library: rte_distributor

[Neil Horman <nhorman@tuxdriver.com>]

On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 11:00:53AM +0100, Bruce Richardson wrote:
> This adds a new library to the Intel DPDK whereby a set of packets can be distributed one-at-a-time to a set of worker cores, with dynamic load balancing being done between those workers. Flows are identified by a tag within the mbuf (currently the RSS hash field, 32-bit value), which is used to ensure that no two packets of the same flow are processed in parallel, thereby preserving ordering.
> 
> Bruce Richardson (4):
>   eal: add tailq for new distributor component
>   distributor: new packet distributor library
>   distributor: add distributor library to build
>   distributor: add unit tests for distributor lib
> 
>  app/test/Makefile                              |   2 +
>  app/test/commands.c                            |   7 +-
>  app/test/test.h                                |   2 +
>  app/test/test_distributor.c                    | 582 +++++++++++++++++++++++++
>  app/test/test_distributor_perf.c               | 274 ++++++++++++
>  config/defconfig_i686-default-linuxapp-gcc     |   5 +
>  config/defconfig_i686-default-linuxapp-icc     |   5 +
>  config/defconfig_x86_64-default-bsdapp-gcc     |   6 +
>  config/defconfig_x86_64-default-linuxapp-gcc   |   5 +
>  config/defconfig_x86_64-default-linuxapp-icc   |   5 +
>  lib/Makefile                                   |   1 +
>  lib/librte_distributor/Makefile                |  50 +++
>  lib/librte_distributor/rte_distributor.c       | 417 ++++++++++++++++++
>  lib/librte_distributor/rte_distributor.h       | 173 ++++++++
>  lib/librte_eal/common/include/rte_tailq_elem.h |   2 +
>  mk/rte.app.mk                                  |   4 +
>  16 files changed, 1539 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
>  create mode 100644 app/test/test_distributor.c
>  create mode 100644 app/test/test_distributor_perf.c
>  create mode 100644 lib/librte_distributor/Makefile
>  create mode 100644 lib/librte_distributor/rte_distributor.c
>  create mode 100644 lib/librte_distributor/rte_distributor.h
> 
> -- 
> 1.9.0
> 
> 
This sounds an awful lot like the team and bonding drivers.  Why implement this
as a separate application accessible api, rather than a stacked PMD?  If you do
the latter then existing applications could concievably change their
configurations to use this technology and gain the benefit of load distribution
without having to alter the application to use a new api.

Neil