On Thu, May 25, 2017 at 11:48 PM, Jes Sorensen <jsorensen@xxxxxx> wrote: > On 05/25/2017 06:40 AM, Saeed Mahameed wrote: >> >> On Thu, May 25, 2017 at 8:20 AM, Ilan Tayari <ilant@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >>>> >>>> -----Original Message----- >>>> Can you put it into different driver? Dumping everything into by far >>>> the biggest nic driver already is already huge headache in terms on >>>> maintainability, debugging and back ports. >>>> Look at how intel splits their drivers. >>>> ixgb, ixgbe, ixgbevf are different drivers thought they have a lot in >>>> common. On one side it's a bit of copy paste, but on the other side >> >> >> I don't think the ixgb example is the same, simply ixgb, ixgbe, >> ixgbevf have different PCI IDs >> and even different SW/FW interfaces. On the other hand, same mlx5 >> driver can support all of >> ConnetX4/5/6 device IDs with the same code flows, same interfaces. >> >>>> it makes drivers much easier to develop and maintain independently. >>>> ConnectX-6 code and any future hw support doesn't belong to >>>> mlx5 driver at all. >> >> >> Sorry i must disagree with you on this for the same reasons Ilan >> mentioned. >> We can perfectly achieve the same with modular driver design all under the >> same .ko module, with some kconfig flags to reduce the amount of >> code/features >> this .ko provides. > > > If I get this right, the FPGA is independent and could in theory be used for > non network stuff. It really should have it's own driver in that case, and > you should provide accessor functionality via the mlx5 driver. > Hi Jes, No, It is clearly stated in the commit message : "The FPGA is a bump-on-the-wire and thus affects operation of the mlx5_core driver on the ConnectX ASIC." Which means mlx5 FPGA user can only write logic which affects only packets going in/out A ConnectX chip - so it is only network stuff -. > We have this with other devices in the kernel where a primary device driver > provides an interface for an additional sub-driver to access another device > behind it. Like bt-coexist in some of the wifi drivers allowing access to a > bluetooth device behind it. > Blutooth over wifi or vise versa is a very good example to what you are requesting. But, it doesn't fit to what we are trying to do here. mlx5 FGPA is a ConnectX card feature, not a new protocol. > Jes -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-rdma" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
