[dpdk-dev] [PATCH v4 2/4] ethdev: tunnel offload model

[Gregory Etelson]

Hello Harsha,

> -----Original Message-----

[snip]
> 
> Tunnel vport is an internal construct used by one specific
> application: OVS. So, shouldn't the rte APIs also be application
> agnostic apart from being vendor agnostic ? For OVS, the match fields
> in the existing datapath flow rules contain enough information to
> identify the tunnel type.

Tunnel offload model was inspired by OVS vport, but it is not part of the existing API.
It looks like the API documentation should not use that term to avoid confusion.

[snip]

[snip]
> 
> Wouldn't it be better if the APIs do not refer to vports and avoid
> percolating it down to the PMD ? My point here is to avoid bringing in
> the knowledge of an application specific virtual object (vport) to the
> PMD.
> 

As I have mentioned above, the API description should not mention vport.
I'll post updated documents. 

> Here's some other issues that I see with the helper APIs and
> vendor-specific variable actions.
> 1) The application needs some kind of validation (or understanding) of
> the actions returned by the PMD. The application can't just blindly
> use the actions specified by the PMD. That is, the decision to pick
> the set of actions can't be left entirely to the PMD.
> 2) The application needs to learn a PMD-specific way of action
> processing for each vendor. For example, how should the application
> handle flow-miss, given a different set of actions between two vendors
> (if one vendor has already popped the tunnel header while the other
> one hasn't).
> 3) The end-users/customers won't have a common interface (as in,
> consistent actions) to perform tunnel decap action. This becomes a
> manageability/maintenance issue for the application while working with
> different vendors.
> 
> IMO, the API shouldn't expect the PMD to understand the notion of
> vport. The goal here is to offload a flow rule to decap the tunnel
> header and forward the packet to a HW endpoint.  The problem is that
> we don't have a way to express the "tnl_pop" datapath action to the HW
> (decap flow #1, in the context of br-phy in OVS-DPDK) and also we may
> not want the HW to really pop the tunnel header at that stage. If this
> cannot be expressed with existing rte action types, maybe we should
> introduce a new action that clearly defines what is expected to the
> PMD.

Tunnel Offload API provides a common interface for all HW vendors:
Rule #1: define a tunneled traffic and steer / group traffic related to
that tunnel
Rule #2: within the tunnel selection, run matchers on all packet headers,
outer and inner, and perform actions on inner headers in case of a match.
For the rule #1 application provides tunnel matchers and traffic selection actions
and for rule #2 application provides full header matchers and actions for inner parts.
The rest is supplied by PMD according to HW and rule type. Application does not
need to understand exact PMD elements implementation.
Helper return value notifies application whether it received requested PMD elements or not.
If helper completed successfully, it means that application received required elements
and can complete flow rule compilation.
As the result, a packet will be fully offloaded or returned to application with enough
information to continue processing in SW.

[snip]

[snip]

> > Miss handling
> > -------------
> > Packets going through multiple rte_flow groups are exposed to hw
> > misses due to partial packet processing. In such cases, the software
> > should continue the packet's processing from the point where the
> > hardware missed.
> 
> Whether the packet goes through multiple groups or not for tunnel
> decap processing, should be left to the PMD/HW.  These assumptions
> shouldn't be built into the APIs. The encapsulated packet (i,e with
> outer headers) should be provided to the application, rather than
> making SW understand that there was a miss in stage-1, or stage-n in
> HW. That is, HW either processes it entirely, or punts the whole
> packet to SW if there's a miss. And the packet should take the normal
> processing path in SW (no action offload).
> 
> Thanks,
> -Harsha

The packet is provided to the application via the standard rte_eth_rx_burst API.
Additional information about the HW packet processing state is provided to
the application by the suggested rte_flow_get_restore_info API. It is up to the
application if to use such provided info, or even if to call this API at all.

[snip]

Regards,
Gregory