Re: [dpdk-dev] [PATCH 0/3] refresh NIC features matrix

[Thomas Monjalon <thomas@monjalon.net>]

20/03/2020 06:35, Zhang, Qi Z:
> Hi Thomas:
> 
> From: Thomas Monjalon <thomas@monjalon.net>
> > 
> > This series aims to clean-up the big table of ethdev features:
> >   http://doc.dpdk.org/guides/nics/overview.html#id1
> > 
> > We could reorganize the information in this table, maybe split it or add/remove
> > some rows.
> > Before going to such reorganization, we should clean it up.
> > 
> > The first patch is fixing the look & size of the table with recent sphinx.
> > 
> > The second and third patches are removing 8 columns which are clearly
> > unneeded:
> >   - bnx2x_vf
> >   - bonding
> >   - kni
> >   - nfp_vf
> >   - null
> >   - ring
> >   - softnic
> >   - vdev_netvsc
> > 
> > More columns can be removed by merging PF/VF and vector datapaths.
> > If a feature cannot be supported in all cases, it should be marked as partially
> > supported (P).
> > If a feature is PF-specific (like flow control), that's OK to mark it fully supported
> > because it's obviously impossible for VF.
> > There are also some features which were probably marked in some columns
> > and missed in its VF or vector counterpart.
> > Please work to merge and drop these 16 columns:
> >   - cxgbevf
> >   - fm10k_vf
> >   - hns3_vf
> >   - i40e_vec
> >   - i40e_vf
> >   - i40e_vf_vec
> >   - iavf_vec
> >   - ice_vec
> >   - igb_vf
> >   - ixgbe_vec
> >   - ixgbe_vf
> >   - ixgbe_vf_vec
> >   - octeontx2_vec
> >   - octeontx2_vf
> >   - qede_vf
> >   - virtio_vec
> > 
> > The total gain is to reduce the table size from 71 to 47 columns.
> 
> I agree to remove all the column with "vec", since vector PMD can be regarded as a feature of the a PMD.
> But I'm not sure if it is a good idea to merge VF and PF into one column.
> From my view, for intel device, VF driver and PF driver just share the code, but they actually are running at two different context.
> And likely they will support different feature, merge into one column may confuse our customer if they want to understand what exactly the PMD support.

I understand you have 2 different datapaths.
My arguments are:
	- it is the same NIC
	- you cannot summarize everything in a table
	- we have two many columns to make it readable

I think the right solution is mark features as partially available (P),
and give details in the driver guide documentation.

Can you please, at least, remove the "vec" columns, as a first step?
Thanks