netdev - Re: [PATCH net-next v4 09/18] net/smc: introduce SMC-D loopback device

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Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2023 09:24:29 +0200
From: Alexandra Winter <wintera@...ux.ibm.com>
To: dust.li@...ux.alibaba.com, Wen Gu <guwen@...ux.alibaba.com>,
        kgraul@...ux.ibm.com, wenjia@...ux.ibm.com, jaka@...ux.ibm.com,
        davem@...emloft.net, edumazet@...gle.com, kuba@...nel.org,
        pabeni@...hat.com
Cc: schnelle@...ux.ibm.com, gbayer@...ux.ibm.com, pasic@...ux.ibm.com,
        alibuda@...ux.alibaba.com, tonylu@...ux.alibaba.com,
        linux-s390@...r.kernel.org, netdev@...r.kernel.org,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH net-next v4 09/18] net/smc: introduce SMC-D loopback
 device



On 25.09.23 17:18, Dust Li wrote:
>> Hello Wen Gu,
>>
>> thank you for adding the Kconfig, so the distributions can decide when to offer this feature.
>>
>> I propose you add some kind of runtime switch as well. Not every user who loads the SMC module
>> may want to exploit smcd-loopback. Especially in native environements without containers.
>>
>> If no RoCE interfaces or no ISM interfaces exist, the respective handling is skipped in SMC.
>> If loopback is always created unconditionally, there is no way to opt-out.
> Hi Sandy,
> 
> After talking to Wen Gu offline, I think the real issue here might be
> we don't have an abstract layer in SMC, something like net/core/dev.c
> 
> Without this, we cannot do:
> 
> 1. Enable/disable those devices dynamically
>    Currently, If we want to disable a SMC-R device to communicate with
>    others, we need to refer to 'ip link set dev xxx down' to disable the
>    netdevice, then Infiniband subsystem will notify SMC that the state of
>    the IB device has changed. We cannot explicitly choose not to use some
>    specific IB/RoCE devices without disable totally.
>    If the loopback device need to support enable/disable itself, I
>    think it might be better to enable this feature for all SMC devices.
> 
> 2. Do statistics per device
>    Now, we have to relay on IB/RoCE devices' hardware statistics to see
>    how many packets/bytes we have sent through this device.
> 
> Both the above issues get worse when the IB/RoCE device is shared by SMC
> and userspace RDMA applications. If SMC-R and userspace RDMA applications
> run at the same time, we can't enable the device to run userspace RDMA
> applications while block it from running SMC. For statistics, we cannot
> tell how many packets/bytes were sent by SMC and how many were sent by
> userspace RDMA applications.
> 
> So I think those are better to support in the SMC layer.
> 
> Best regards!
> Dust

Thank you very much for your considerations. I also think a generic handling 
of these requirements in the smc layer would be best. Especially, if we want 
to add virtio-ism support soon. There we will face the same issues again.
Let's hear what others think about this.