[dpdk-dev] [PATCH v2 00/12] preparing l2fwd for eventmode additions

[Joseph, Anoob]

Hi Bruce,

The reason why l2fwd was chosen was to allow everyone to chip in their 
ideas while preparing the framework.
This framework would be extended to other applications, hence needed 
enough inputs before expanding to complex applications. If your 
suggestion is to make l3fwd event driven first, I'll start looking in 
that direction.

As for l2fwd, I'm fine with moving event-mode additions to a new app. 
But with the present approach, the app would run in both event mode and 
poll mode.

Your thoughts on renaming the existing app to l2fwd-poll and the 
proposed app as l2fwd?

Thanks,
Anoob
On 13-08-2018 14:57, Bruce Richardson wrote:
> External Email
>
> On Mon, Aug 13, 2018 at 12:52:19PM +0530, Joseph, Anoob wrote:
>> Hi Bruce, Pablo,
>>
>> If there are no more issues about the approach, can you review the patches
>> and give the feedback?
>>
>> Please do note that this series doesn't add any event mode specific code.
>> That will come as a different patch series after incorporating Jerin's
>> comments.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Anoob
> My main concern is with l2fwd, rather than l3fwd, which is already fairly
> complicated. I could see l3fwd being updated to allow an eventmode without
> too many problems.
>
> With l2fwd, the only issue I have is with the volume of code involved.
> l2fwd is currently a very simple application which fits in a single file.
> With these updates it's no longer such a simple, approachable app, rather
> it becomes one which takes a bit of studying a switching between files to
> fully understand. The data path is only a very small part of the app, so by
> adding an event-based path to the same app we have very little code saving.
> Therefore, I think having a separate l2fwd-eventdev would be better for
> this case. Two simpler to understand apps is better than one more
> complicated on IMHO.
>
> My 2c.
>
> /Bruce
>
>> On 02-08-2018 13:49, Ananyev, Konstantin wrote:
>>> External Email
>>>
>>> Hi everyone,
>>>
>>>>>>> In order to get this series accepted, we need more discussions
>>>>>>> with more people involved.
>>>>>>> So it will miss 18.08.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> It can be discussed in a more global discussion about examples maintenance.
>>>>>>> If discussion does not happen, you can request it to the technical board.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> Event dev framework and various adapters enable multiple packet handling
>>>>>> schemes, as opposed to the traditional polling on queues. But these
>>>>>> features are not integrated into any established example application.
>>>>>> There are specific example applications for event dev etc, which can be
>>>>>> used to analyze an event device or a particular eventdev adapter, but
>>>>>> there is no standard application which can be used to compare the real
>>>>>> world performance for a system when it's using event device for packet
>>>>>> handling and when it's done via polling on queues.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The following patch submitted by Sunil was looking to address this issue
>>>>>> with l3fwd,
>>>>>> https://mails.dpdk.org/archives/dev/2018-March/093131.html
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Bruce & Jerin reviewed the patch and suggested the addition of helper
>>>>>> functions to abstract the event mode additions in applications,
>>>>>> https://mails.dpdk.org/archives/dev/2018-April/096879.html
>>>>>>
>>>>>> This effort of adding helper functions for eventmode was taken up
>>>>>> following the above suggestion. The idea is to add eventmode without
>>>>>> touching the existing code path. All the eventmode specific additions
>>>>>> would go into library so that these need not be repeated for every
>>>>>> application. And since there is no change in the existing code path,
>>>>>> performance for any vendor should not have any impact with the additions.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The scope of this effort has increased since the submission, as now we
>>>>>> have Tx adapter as well. Sunil & Konstantin had clarified their
>>>>>> concerns, and gave green flag to this approach.
>>>>>> https://mails.dpdk.org/archives/dev/2018-June/105730.html
>>>>>> https://mails.dpdk.org/archives/dev/2018-July/106453.html
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I guess Bruce was opening this question to the community. For compute
>>>>>> intense applications like ipsec-secgw, eventmode might be the right
>>>>>> approach in the first place. Such complex applications would need a
>>>>>> scheduler to perform dynamic load balancing. Addition of eventmode in
>>>>>> l2fwd was to float around the idea which can then be scaled for more
>>>>>> complex applications.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> If maintainers doesn't have any objection to this, I'm fine with adding
>>>>>> this in the next release.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>>> Anoob
>>>>> It is important that DPDK has good examples of how to use existing
>>>>> frameworks and libraries. These applications are what most customers
>>>>> build their applications from and they provide basis for testing.
>>>>>
>>>>> The DPDK needs to continue to support multiple usage models. This
>>>>> is one of its strong points. I would rather leave existing l2fwd
>>>>> and l3fwd alone and instead make new examples that use the frameworks.
>>>>> If nothing else haveing l2fwd and l2fwd-eventdev would allow for
>>>>> performance comparisons.
>>>> Unlike other applications example, there wont be any change in packet
>>>> processing functions in eventdev vs poll mode case. Only worker
>>>> schematics will change and that can be moved to separated files.
>>>> something like worker_poll.c and worker_event.c and both of them
>>>> use common packet processing functions using mbuf.
>>>>
>>>> The only disadvantage of having separate application would be packet
>>>> processing code duplication. Which is non trivial for l3fwd, IPSec
>>>> application IMO.
>>> Personally I am ok with original design suggestion:
>>> keep packet processing code common, that would be used by both poll and event modes.
>>> We could just have a command-line parameter in which mode the app will run.
>>> Another alternative - generate two binaries l2fwd-poll, l2fwd-event (or so).
>>> Konstantin
>>>> # Are we fine with code duplication in example application like l3fwd and
>>>> IPSec?
>>>> # if yes, Are we fine with keeping l2fwd _as is_ to reduce the
>>>> complexity and l2fwd-eventdev supports both modes wherever possible?
>>>>
>>>>> As the number of examples increases, probably also need to have
>>>>> a roadmap or decision chart to explain the advangage/disadvantage
>>>>> of each architecture.
>>>>>