netdev - Re: [PATCH bpf-next v3 00/15] Introducing AF

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Date:   Fri, 4 May 2018 17:34:47 -0700
From:   Alexei Starovoitov <alexei.starovoitov@...il.com>
To:     Magnus Karlsson <magnus.karlsson@...il.com>
Cc:     Daniel Borkmann <daniel@...earbox.net>,
        Björn Töpel <bjorn.topel@...il.com>,
        "Karlsson, Magnus" <magnus.karlsson@...el.com>,
        Alexander Duyck <alexander.h.duyck@...el.com>,
        Alexander Duyck <alexander.duyck@...il.com>,
        John Fastabend <john.fastabend@...il.com>,
        Alexei Starovoitov <ast@...com>,
        Jesper Dangaard Brouer <brouer@...hat.com>,
        Willem de Bruijn <willemdebruijn.kernel@...il.com>,
        "Michael S. Tsirkin" <mst@...hat.com>,
        Network Development <netdev@...r.kernel.org>,
        Björn Töpel <bjorn.topel@...el.com>,
        michael.lundkvist@...csson.com,
        "Brandeburg, Jesse" <jesse.brandeburg@...el.com>,
        "Singhai, Anjali" <anjali.singhai@...el.com>,
        "Zhang, Qi Z" <qi.z.zhang@...el.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH bpf-next v3 00/15] Introducing AF_XDP support

On Fri, May 04, 2018 at 01:22:17PM +0200, Magnus Karlsson wrote:
> On Fri, May 4, 2018 at 1:38 AM, Alexei Starovoitov
> <alexei.starovoitov@...il.com> wrote:
> > On Fri, May 04, 2018 at 12:49:09AM +0200, Daniel Borkmann wrote:
> >> On 05/02/2018 01:01 PM, Björn Töpel wrote:
> >> > From: Björn Töpel <bjorn.topel@...el.com>
> >> >
> >> > This patch set introduces a new address family called AF_XDP that is
> >> > optimized for high performance packet processing and, in upcoming
> >> > patch sets, zero-copy semantics. In this patch set, we have removed
> >> > all zero-copy related code in order to make it smaller, simpler and
> >> > hopefully more review friendly. This patch set only supports copy-mode
> >> > for the generic XDP path (XDP_SKB) for both RX and TX and copy-mode
> >> > for RX using the XDP_DRV path. Zero-copy support requires XDP and
> >> > driver changes that Jesper Dangaard Brouer is working on. Some of his
> >> > work has already been accepted. We will publish our zero-copy support
> >> > for RX and TX on top of his patch sets at a later point in time.
> >>
> >> +1, would be great to see it land this cycle. Saw few minor nits here
> >> and there but nothing to hold it up, for the series:
> >>
> >> Acked-by: Daniel Borkmann <daniel@...earbox.net>
> >>
> >> Thanks everyone!
> >
> > Great stuff!
> >
> > Applied to bpf-next, with one condition.
> > Upcoming zero-copy patches for both RX and TX need to be posted
> > and reviewed within this release window.
> > If netdev community as a whole won't be able to agree on the zero-copy
> > bits we'd need to revert this feature before the next merge window.
> 
> Thanks everyone for reviewing this. Highly appreciated.
> 
> Just so we understand the purpose correctly:
> 
> 1: Do you want to see the ZC patches in order to verify that the user
> space API holds? If so, we can produce an additional RFC  patch set
> using a big chunk of code that we had in RFC V1. We are not proud of
> this code since it is clunky, but it hopefully proves the point with
> the uapi being the same.
> 
> 2: And/Or are you worried about us all (the netdev community) not
> agreeing on a way to implement ZC internally in the drivers and the
> XDP infrastructure? This is not going to be possible to finish during
> this cycle since we do not like the implementation we had in RFC V1.
> Too intrusive and now we also have nicer abstractions from Jesper that
> we can use and extend to provide a (hopefully) much cleaner and less
> intrusive solution.

short answer: both.

Cleanliness and performance of the ZC code is not as important as
getting API right. The main concern that during ZC review process
we will find out that existing API has issues, so we have to
do this exercise before the merge window.
And RFC won't fly. Send the patches for real. They have to go
through the proper code review. The hackers of netdev community
can accept a partial, or a bit unclean, or slightly inefficient
implementation, since it can be and will be improved later,
but API we cannot change once it goes into official release.

Here is the example of API concern:
this patch set added shared umem concept. It sounds good in theory,
but will it perform well with ZC ? Earlier RFCs didn't have that
feature. If it won't perform well than it shouldn't be in the tree.
The key reason to let AF_XDP into the tree is its performance promise.
If it doesn't perform we should rip it out and redesign.