[dpdk-dev] [PATCH 0/8] Introduce emudev library and iavf emudev driver

[Xia, Chenbo]

Hi David,

> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Marchand <david.marchand at redhat.com>
> Sent: Friday, December 18, 2020 5:54 PM
> To: Xia, Chenbo <chenbo.xia at intel.com>
> Cc: dev <dev at dpdk.org>; Thomas Monjalon <thomas at monjalon.net>; Stephen
> Hemminger <stephen at networkplumber.org>; Liang, Cunming
> <cunming.liang at intel.com>; Lu, Xiuchun <xiuchun.lu at intel.com>; Li, Miao
> <miao.li at intel.com>; Wu, Jingjing <jingjing.wu at intel.com>
> Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/8] Introduce emudev library and iavf emudev driver
> 
> On Fri, Dec 18, 2020 at 9:02 AM Chenbo Xia <chenbo.xia at intel.com> wrote:
> >
> > This series introduces a new device abstraction called emudev for
> emulated
> > devices. A new library (librte_emudev) is implemented. The first emudev
> > driver is also introduced, which emulates Intel Adaptive Virtual
> Function
> > (iavf) as a software network device.
> >
> > This series has a dependency on librte_vfio_user patch series:
> > http://patchwork.dpdk.org/cover/85389/
> >
> > Background & Motivation
> > -----------------------
> > The disaggregated/multi-process QEMU is using VFIO-over-socket/vfio-user
> > as the main transport mechanism to disaggregate IO services from QEMU.
> > Therefore, librte_vfio_user is introduced in DPDK to accommodate
> > emulated devices for high performance I/O. Although vfio-user library
> > provides possibility of emulating devices in DPDK, DPDK does not have
> > a device abstraction for emulated devices. A good device abstraction
> will
> > be useful for applications or high performance data path driver. With
> > this consideration, emudev library is designed and implemented. It also
> > make it possbile to keep modular design on emulated devices by
> implementing
> > data path related logic in a standalone driver (e.g., an ethdev driver)
> > and keeps the unrelated logic in the emudev driver.
> 
> Since you mention performance, how does it compare to vhost-user/virtio?

I think it depends on the device specification (i.e., how complex its data path
handling is). A first try on iavf spec shows better performance than virtio
in our simple tests.

Thanks!
Chenbo

> 
> 
> --
> David Marchand