netdev - Re: [RFC v2] virtio: add virtio-over-PCI driver

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Date:	Thu, 26 Feb 2009 23:34:33 +0100
From:	Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>
To:	Ira Snyder <iws@...o.caltech.edu>
Cc:	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	Rusty Russell <rusty@...tcorp.com.au>,
	Jan-Bernd Themann <THEMANN@...ibm.com>,
	linuxppc-dev@...abs.org, netdev@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [RFC v2] virtio: add virtio-over-PCI driver

On Thursday 26 February 2009, Ira Snyder wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 09:37:14PM +0100, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> 
> The registers are part of the board control registers. They don't fit at
> all in the message unit. Doing this in the bootloader seems like a
> logical place, but that would require any testers to flash a new U-Boot
> image into their mpc8349emds boards.
> 
> The first set of access is used to set up a 1GB region in the memory map
> that accesses the host's memory. Any reads/writes to addresses
> 0x80000000-0xc0000000 actually hit the host's memory.
> 
> The last access sets up PCI BAR1 to hit the memory from
> dma_alloc_coherent(). The bootloader already sets up the window as 16K,
> it just doesn't point it anywhere. Maybe this /should/ go into the
> bootloader. Like above, it would require testers to flash a new U-Boot
> image into their mpc8349emds boards.

Ok, I see.

I guess the best option for doing it in Linux then would be to have
a board control driver (not sure if this already exists) that exports
high-level functions to set up the inbound and outbound windows.

> Yeah, virtio doesn't work that way.
> 
> The virtio drivers just call find_vq() with a different index for each
> queue they want to use. You have no way of knowing how many queues each
> virtio driver will want, unless you go read their source code.
> 
> virtio-net currently uses 3 queues, but we only support the first two.
> The third is optional (for now...), and non-symmetric.

I mean the part of your driver that calls register_virtio_device()
could make the decision, this is the one I was referring to
as virtio_net glue because it is the only part that actually needs
to know about the features etc.

Right now, you just call register_virtio_net from vop_probe(), which
is absolutely appropriate for the specific use case. In the most
general case though, you would have a user interface on one or
both sides that allows a (root) user to trigger the creation of
a virtio_net (or other virtio) device with specific characteristics
such as MAC address or number of virtqueues.

One idea I had earlier was that there could be a special device
with just one virtqueue that is always present and that allows you
do communicate configuration changes regarding the available devices
to the remote VOP driver.

	Arnd <><
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