Re: [PATCH v5 00/35] combine multiple Intel scalar Tx paths

Bruce Richardson
2026-02-12T14:46:07Z

On Wed, Feb 11, 2026 at 06:12:29PM +0000, Bruce Richardson wrote:
> The scalar Tx paths, with support for offloads and multiple mbufs
> per packet, are almost identical across drivers ice, i40e, iavf and
> the single-queue mode of idpf. Therefore, we can do some rework to
> combine these code paths into a single function which is parameterized
> by compile-time constants, allowing code saving to give us a single
> path to optimize and maintain - apart from edge cases like IPSec
> support in iavf.
>
> The ixgbe driver has a number of similarities too, which we take
> advantage of where we can, but the overall descriptor format is
> sufficiently different that its main scalar code path is kept
> separate.
>
> Once merged, we can then optimize the drivers a bit to improve
> performance, and also easily extend some drivers to use additional
> paths for better performance, e.g. add the "simple scalar" path
> to IDPF driver for better performance on platforms without AVX.
>
> V5:
> - more updates following review including:
> * dropped patch 19 for new EAL macro, and used struct alignment instead
> * added extra comments for some code, e.g. reason to remove volatile
> * dropped patch 22 marking a branch as unlikely
> * split bugfix off patch 24
> * corrected idpf path selection logic to not assume in-order queue setup
>
Series applied to dpdk-next-net-intel

Thanks for all the reviews.

/Bruce