linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v8 08/14] crypto: iaa - Add IAA Compression Accelerator Documentation

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Date:   Mon, 21 Aug 2023 19:21:34 +0200
From:   Pavel Machek <pavel@....cz>
To:     Tom Zanussi <tom.zanussi@...ux.intel.com>
Cc:     herbert@...dor.apana.org.au, davem@...emloft.net,
        fenghua.yu@...el.com, vkoul@...nel.org, dave.jiang@...el.com,
        tony.luck@...el.com, wajdi.k.feghali@...el.com,
        james.guilford@...el.com, kanchana.p.sridhar@...el.com,
        vinodh.gopal@...el.com, giovanni.cabiddu@...el.com,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linux-crypto@...r.kernel.org,
        dmaengine@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH v8 08/14] crypto: iaa - Add IAA Compression Accelerator
 Documentation

Hi!

> Because the IAA Compression Accelerator requires significant user
> setup in order to be used properly, this adds documentation on the
> iaa_crypto driver including setup, usage, and examples.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Tom Zanussi <tom.zanussi@...ux.intel.com>


> +accel-config
> +------------
> +
> +Unlike typical drivers, the iaa_crypto driver does not enable the
> +device on driver load.  Due to complexity and configurability of the
> +accelerator devices, it was a design decision to have the user
> +configure the device and manually enable the desired devices and
> +workqueues.

Is the driver really so special? Is it widely used besides of zswap? Could some kind of 
simple default configuration good enough for zswap be provided?

> +The userspace tool to help doing that is called accel-config.  Using
> +accel-config to configure device or loading a previously saved config
> +is highly recommended.  The device can be controlled via sysfs
> +directly but comes with the warning that do this ONLY if you know
> +exactly what you are doing.  This document will not cover the sysfs
> +interface but assumes you will be using accel-config.

Not covering the interface here is okay, but we really should have description somewhere, 
and there should be pointer to it here.

> +++ b/Documentation/driver-api/crypto/iaa/index.rst
> @@ -0,0 +1,20 @@
> +.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
> +
> +=================================
> +IAA (Intel Analytics Accelerator)
> +=================================
> +
> +IAA provides hardware compression and decompression via the crypto
> +API.

Why is it called "analytics accelerator" when its main function is compression?

Best regards,
                                                                        Pavel
-- 
(english) http://www.livejournal.com/~pavelmachek
(cesky, pictures) http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel/picture/horses/blog.html