[dpdk-dev] [PATCH 0/2] net/softnic: sw fall-back for traffic management

[Dumitrescu, Cristian]

<snip> ...
> 
> I'm sure I'm missing something.
> In my understanding, we do not need to change the ops:
> 	- if the device offers the capability, let's call the ops
> 	- else call the software fallback function
> 

What you might be missing is the observation that the approach you're describing requires changing each and every PMD. The changes are also intrusive: need to change the ops that need the SW fall-back patching, also need to change the private data of each PMD (as assigned to the opaque dev->data->dev_private) to add the context data needed by the patched ops. Therefore, this approach is a no-go.

We are looking for a generic approach that can gracefully and transparently work with any PMD.