[dpdk-dev] L3fwd mode in testpmd

[Dharmik Thakkar]

Hi,
Kathleen has submitted an RFC patch [1] in this regard. We’d appreciate your comments.

[1]
https://patches.dpdk.org/project/dpdk/patch/20210430213747.41530-2-kathleen.capella@arm.com/

Thank you!

> On Apr 30, 2021, at 4:28 AM, Ananyev, Konstantin <konstantin.ananyev at intel.com> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Thu, Apr 29, 2021 at 11:47:30AM +0000, Ananyev, Konstantin wrote:
>> <snip>
>>>> 
>>>> It looks as if implementing em_mask_key() is enough to get l3fwd
>>>> working. However to me this ifdef seems tricky. How should a scalar
>>>> implementation handle the xmm_t type? rte_xmm_t looks like an API
>>>> type/union, but both are not mentioned in documentation and are in
>>>> platform dependent rte_vect.h only.
>>>> So either I add another case for RISC-V or (what seems more proper) add
>>>> an else clause implementation. However then should I change this function
>>>> to take rte_xmm_t? If not is casting xmm_t to i.e. int32_t[] always
>>>> valid? Even if I change to rte_xmm_t, it's not a stable API type, is it?
>>>> So what guarantee do I have that it maps to int32_t bit-wise on every
>>>> platform?
>>>> 
>>>> I think the semantic requirements of xmm_t typedef are a bit undefined as
>>>> well as the vector handling across the architectures (being something
>>>> rather arch specific). I don't have a clear idea on how to solve this
>>>> yet and I would not like to hijack this discussion with vector stuff.
>>>> 
>>>> Though I may be missing some obvious solution here. Any idea is welcome.
>>>> :)
>>> 
>>> I think it should be possible to replace xmm_t with rte_xmm_t in ipv(4|6)_5tuple_host
>>> and make em_mask_key to take 'rte_xmm_t *' as a parameter/return value instead of xmm_t.
>>> With that in place scalar version seems straightforward.
>>> Of course perf regression test would be needed after such changes,
>>> but I think with '-O3' it should be no difference.
>>> 
>> I did that and it works in practice. I'm more asking about the lack of
>> definition in rte_xmm_t semantics. Because once it's in an example,
>> people may start assuming it's OK to use it this way.
>> If it is OK, then I'll just post a patch, otherwise we need a separate
>> discussion.
> 
> From my perspective: rte_xmm_t is a union used to simplify SIMD-related
> code development. It contains HW specific field (xmm_t) and common ones.
> It is not used in public DPDK API, but it is used quite extensively inside various libs.
> As a public structure - so it can be used by examples and user code
> (as long as it is defined for the given architecture).
> So I suppose it is up to you guys to decide do you want to define it for your architecture or not.
> If not, but you would still like to run l3fwd, then probably l3fwd_em.c needs to be split
> Into l3fwd_em_scalar.c and l3fwd_em_vect.c.  
> 
> Konstantin