Ferruh, I share the same thoughts as Tom here. >Ferruh Yigit wrote : >> Is this a common enough feature to include into ethdev abstraction layer? Or >> a >> feature for a single vendor? > >I found reference to mbuf’s timestamp field only in MLX5. I think it is the >only one to support timestamp offloading. This new API is only useful to make >sense out of the timestamp value. And without this patch, timestamp offloading >is completely useless… > >What would be the other way ? Define something in mlx5 header and ask clients >to check for the driver and call the specific API ? > >I see reference to timestamp offloading in Netronome Agilio, CC-ing >maintainers. Is timestamp offloading a feature you could potentially provide ? >Would it be host time reference or a value that need conversion with an API >like this?
I don’t think that the number of vendors which implement the feature at current time is the qualifier for a feature to enter. Rather we should consider how generic it is and its need in the world of networking (since it is ethdev). IMO, It is perfectly reasonable to expose a generic channel to read the device clock, same as reading device register (which exists).
