Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH v3 net-next] Documentation: devlink: Add devlink-sd

From: Jakub Kicinski <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2024 12:45:45 -0800

On Wed, 31 Jan 2024 11:16:58 -0800 William Tu wrote:
> On 1/31/24 11:06 AM, Jakub Kicinski wrote:
> >> Thanks for taking a look. Yes, for our use case we only need this API.  
> > I'm not sure how to interpret that, I think you answered a different
> > question :) To avoid any misunderstandings here - let me rephrase a
> > bit: are you only going to use this API to configure representors?
> > Is any other netdev functionality going to use shared pools (i.e. other
> > than RDMA)?  
> 
> oh, now I understand your question.
> 
> Yes, this API is only to configure representors in switchdev mode.
> 
> No other netdev functionality will use this API.

Hm, interesting. I was asking because I recently heard some academic
talk where the guy mentioned something along the lines of new nVidia
NICs having this amazing feature of reusing free buffer pools while
keeping completions separate. So I was worried this will scope creep 
from something we don't care about all that much (fallback traffic)
to something we care about very much (e.g. container interfaces).
Since you promise this is for representors only, it's a simpler
conversation!

Still, I feel like shared buffer pools / shared queues is how majority
of drivers implement representors. Did you had a look around?