David Miller wrote:
From: Ben Greear <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2007 14:17:44 -0700
Jeff Garzik wrote:
If hardware w/ multiple queues will the capability for different MAC
addresses, different RX filters, etc. does it make sense to add that
below the net_device level?
We will have to add all the configuration machinery at the per-queue
level that already exists at the per-netdev level.
Perhaps the mac-vlan patch would be a good fit. Currently it is all
software based, but if the hardware can filter on MAC, it can basically
do mac-vlan acceleration. The mac-vlan devices are just like 'real' ethernet
devices, so they can be used with whatever schemes work with regular devices.
Interesting.
But to answer Jeff's question, that's not really the model being
used to implement multiple queues.
The MAC is still very much centralized in most designs.
So one way they'll do it is to support assigning N MAC addresses,
and you configure the input filters of the chip to push packets
for each MAC to the proper receive queue.
So the MAC will accept any of those in the N MAC addresses as
it's own, then you use the filtering facilities to steer
frames to the correct RX queue.
Not quite... You'll have to deal with multiple Rx filters, not just the
current one-filter-for-all model present in today's NICs. Pools of
queues will have separate configured characteristics. The "steer"
portion you mention is a bottleneck that wants to be eliminated.
Jeff
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