[dpdk-dev] [RFC PATCH 0/1] Dataplane Workload Accelerator library

[Stephen Hemminger]

On Wed, 20 Oct 2021 01:06:10 +0530
Jerin Jacob <jerinjacobk at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 20, 2021 at 12:38 AM Thomas Monjalon <thomas at monjalon.net> wrote:
> >
> > 19/10/2021 20:14, jerinj at marvell.com:  
> > > Definition of Dataplane Workload Accelerator
> > > --------------------------------------------
> > > Dataplane Workload Accelerator(DWA) typically contains a set of CPUs,
> > > Network controllers and programmable data acceleration engines for
> > > packet processing, cryptography, regex engines, baseband processing, etc.
> > > This allows DWA to offload  compute/packet processing/baseband/
> > > cryptography-related workload from the host CPU to save the cost and power.
> > > Also to enable scaling the workload by adding DWAs to the Host CPU as needed.
> > >
> > > Unlike other devices in DPDK, the DWA device is not fixed-function
> > > due to the fact that it has CPUs and programmable HW accelerators.
> > > This enables DWA personality/workload to be completely programmable.
> > > Typical examples of DWA offloads are Flow/Session management,
> > > Virtual switch, TLS offload, IPsec offload, l3fwd offload, etc.  
> >
> > If I understand well, the idea is to abstract the offload
> > of some stack layers in the hardware.  
> 
> Yes. It may not just HW, For expressing the complicated workloads
> may need CPU and/or other HW accelerators.
> 
> > I am not sure we should give an API for such stack layers in DPDK.  
> 
> Why not
This is the problem of should DPDK reinvent higher protocol layers?
Given the myriad of other projects using DPDK that already provide these
protocols; the de facto decision has been to not add higher layers.

The boundary between DPDK and OVS, VPP, yastack, ... has stayed roughly
the same for several years. If DPDK starts to overlap these other projects
it makes life harder.

If the HW support crosses over between projects it gets very complex.