netdev - Re: [RFC v3 00/11] HFI Virtual Network Interface Controller (VNIC)

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Message-ID: <20170208174535.GD30720@obsidianresearch.com>
Date:   Wed, 8 Feb 2017 10:45:35 -0700
From:   Jason Gunthorpe <jgunthorpe@...idianresearch.com>
To:     "Vishwanathapura, Niranjana" <niranjana.vishwanathapura@...el.com>
Cc:     Bart Van Assche <Bart.VanAssche@...disk.com>,
        "dledford@...hat.com" <dledford@...hat.com>,
        "sean.hefty@...el.com" <sean.hefty@...el.com>,
        "netdev@...r.kernel.org" <netdev@...r.kernel.org>,
        "linux-rdma@...r.kernel.org" <linux-rdma@...r.kernel.org>,
        "dennis.dalessandro@...el.com" <dennis.dalessandro@...el.com>,
        "ira.weiny@...el.com" <ira.weiny@...el.com>
Subject: Re: [RFC v3 00/11] HFI Virtual Network Interface Controller (VNIC)

On Tue, Feb 07, 2017 at 04:54:16PM -0800, Vishwanathapura, Niranjana wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 07, 2017 at 09:58:50PM +0000, Bart Van Assche wrote:
> >On Tue, 2017-02-07 at 21:44 +0000, Hefty, Sean wrote:
> >>This is Ethernet - not IP - encapsulation over a non-InfiniBand device/protocol.
> >
> >That's more than clear from the cover letter. In my opinion the cover letter
> >should explain why it is considered useful to have such a driver upstream
> >and what the use cases are of encapsulating Ethernet frames inside RDMA
> >packets.
> >
> 
> We believe on our HW, HFI VNIC design gives better hardware resource usage
> which is also scalable and hence room for better performance.

Lets not go overboard here, you are mainly getting better performance
because vnic has the new netdev interface to the HFI driver. There is
nothing stopping ipoib from having the same capability and a similar
HFI driver implementation.

> Also as evident in the cover letter, it gives us better manageability by
> defining virtual Ethernet switches overlaid on the fabric and
> use standard Ethernet support provided by Linux.

This is true and probably the most important reason..

Jason