Thanks Kais for your time reading this case. AFAIK, the "I/OAT" mentioned is to describe h/w capability. Because this case itself doesn't introduce any interface changes, the interfaces involved to support this feature is out of the scope this case.
Below paragraph was trying to explain why a new driver needed and wanted to imply such feature can be supported in the future when framework is ready. Hope this clarification is helpful. Also, please see below embedded answers. -Cecilia Kais Belgaied Wrote: > Cecilia Hu wrote: >> >> The architecture of the Intel 10GbE PCI Express Adapter differs >> significantly from the Intel 82597EX based PCIX Adapter, which is >> supported by ixgb. An important new feature of this adapter is I/OAT >> (I/O Acceleration Technology) from Intel which will be helpful for >> performance improvement. So we introduce a new driver to support >> them. > > let's see. I/O AT is a collection of new capabilities that may involve > the NIC, the chipset and/or > the CPU. > Could you say more about which of these capabilities that this case will > be using/supporting? This driver can use the capabilities of NIC, chipset and CPU, but it will support the I/OAT features only after framework is ready. > which are expected to actually be present on SPARC, Intel, AMD systems? > Will the driver invoke any new kernel interface to query whether the > platform specific > features are present or not? is this case introducing these interfaces > or are they covered elsewhere? This case does not introduce any interfaces. > Also looking at Intel's docs (and previous presentations), there is a > hint to a need for an "optimized > TCP/IP stack" in order to benefit from I/O AT. (see for instance > http://download.intel.com/technology/comms/perfnet/download/98856.pdf). > Is this case introducing changes for the OpenSolaris TCP/IP stack to be > able to use I/OAT ? Any new > interfaces needed to negotiate such capabs? This case only covers the implementation of this driver. It will not introduce changes for the OpenSolaris TCP/IP stack either. > Last, one comment about the Asynchronous low cost data copy (a.k.a. > Intel's QuickData component of the I/O AT), > this seems to be a generic enough functionality, with benefits beyond > the networking. > My suggestion is to consider exposing the interfaces that use it. This case will NOT cover it. -- Cecilia.Hu at Sun.COM Solaris x86 Engineering, Sun Microsystems +86-10-82618200 ext. 82947 / 62673947
