netdev - Re: [PATCH] net: phy: b53: switchdev driver for Broadcom BCM53xx switches

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Message-ID: <20150225154607.GD1332@gospo.home.greyhouse.net>
Date:	Wed, 25 Feb 2015 10:46:07 -0500
From:	Andy Gospodarek <gospo@...ulusnetworks.com>
To:	Andrew Lunn <andrew@...n.ch>
Cc:	Rafa?? Mi??ecki <zajec5@...il.com>,
	Florian Fainelli <f.fainelli@...il.com>,
	"David S. Miller" <davem@...emloft.net>,
	Network Development <netdev@...r.kernel.org>,
	Jonas Gorski <jogo@...nwrt.org>,
	Hauke Mehrtens <hauke@...ke-m.de>,
	Felix Fietkau <nbd@...nwrt.org>, Jiri Pirko <jiri@...nulli.us>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] net: phy: b53: switchdev driver for Broadcom BCM53xx
 switches

On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 03:03:56PM +0100, Andrew Lunn wrote:
[...]
> 
> What we don't want is X chip families and Y different ways to
> configure the features. Ideal we want X chip families, and one way to
> configure them all.

This statement is really my primary concern.  There is lots of interest
around hardware offload at this point and it seems like there is a risk
that a lack of consistency can create problems.

I think these patches are great as they allow for the programming of the
offload hardware (and it has been pointed out that this drastically
increases performance), but one concern I have with this patch (related
to this) is that I'm not sure there is a major need to create netdevs
automatically if there is not the ability to rx/tx actual frames on
these interfaces.

Since the SoC's NIC is going to handle all packet rx/tx then it seems
like there should be a way to signal between the switching
hardware/driver and the NIC driver.  I'm not sure what the ideal
interface for this is, but maybe there is room in the switchdev infra
add some ops to find a way to make this signalling possible to create
netdevs and allow incoming traffic to be assigned to the appropriate
device.

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