Re: [RFC v2 1/2] PCI-Express Non-Transparent Bridge Support

[Jon Mason <jon.mason@intel.com>]

On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 02:02:25PM -0400, chetan loke wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 1:27 PM, Jon Mason <jon.mason@intel.com> wrote:
> >
> > I don't see the benefit of having the driver in staging.  Any vendors
> > who would notice the ntb driver in staging would be sitting on these
> > mailing lists and hopefully have planety of comments on the design.
> > Stashing the driver in staging while waiting for these comments (which
> > may never come) doesn't seem the best course of action.
> >
> 
> I thought that since others are talking about it then may be there is
> some WIP code for foo-NTB. Seems like that's not the case. So no need
> to stage.
> 
> Correct me if I'm wrong but wouldn't apps just open a socket and route
> data via ntb_vir_eth_dev? So I don't see an ABI breakage issue and
> hence nothing would prevent us from changing the kernel parts(for
> accommodating some foo-NTB part) in future.

The virtual ethernet device (patch #2) would allow for a generic way
of passing data to the remote side.  The only issue would be changing
how it is encoded in the shared buffer.

> It may not be a bad idea to prefix intel-specific(if any)
> ntb_structs/variables/logic with the 'intc'(Intel ticker or pick your
> string) keyword.

The Intel specific things are current pre-pended with "xeon" or "bwd".

Thanks,
Jon


> 
> Chetan Loke