[dpdk-dev] [RFC PATCH 0/1] mldev: introduce machine learning device library

[Morten Brørup]

> From: Jerin Jacob [mailto:jerinjacobk at gmail.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, 16 August 2022 15.13
> 
> On Wed, Aug 3, 2022 at 8:49 PM Stephen Hemminger
> <stephen at networkplumber.org> wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, 3 Aug 2022 18:58:37 +0530
> > <jerinj at marvell.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Roadmap
> > > -------
> > > 1) Address the comments for this RFC.
> > > 2) Common code for mldev
> > > 3) SW mldev driver based on TVM (https://tvm.apache.org/)
> >
> > Having a SW implementation is important because then it can be
> covered
> > by tests.
> 
> Yes. That reason for adding TVM based SW driver as item (3).
> 
> Is there any other high level or API level comments before proceeding
> with v1 and implementation.

Have you seriously considered if the DPDK Project is the best home for this project? I can easily imagine the DPDK development process being a hindrance in many aspects for an evolving AI/ML library. Off the top of my head, it would probably be better off as a separate project, like SPDK.

If all this stuff can be completely omitted at build time, I have no objections.

A small note about naming (not intending to start a flame war, so please feel free to ignore!): I haven't worked seriously with ML/AI since university three decades ago, so I'm quite rusty in the domain. However, I don't see any Machine Learning functions proposed by this API. The library provides an API to an Inference Engine - but nobody says the inference model stems from Machine Learning; it might as well be a hand crafted model. Do you plan to propose APIs for training the models? If not, the name of the library could confuse some potential users.

> Or Anyone else interested to review or contribute to this new DPDK
> device class?