From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Luke Gorrie Subject: Re: Beyond DPDK 2.0 Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2015 11:07:50 +0200 Message-ID: References: <26FA93C7ED1EAA44AB77D62FBE1D27BA54D1A917@IRSMSX102.ger.corp.intel.com> <26FA93C7ED1EAA44AB77D62FBE1D27BA54D2C241@IRSMSX102.ger.corp.intel.com> <20150424170035.GC32445@hmsreliant.think-freely.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Cc: "dev-VfR2kkLFssw@public.gmane.org" To: Neil Horman Return-path: In-Reply-To: <20150424170035.GC32445-B26myB8xz7F8NnZeBjwnZQMhkBWG/bsMQH7oEaQurus@public.gmane.org> List-Id: patches and discussions about DPDK List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: dev-bounces-VfR2kkLFssw@public.gmane.org Sender: "dev" Hi Neil, Thanks for taking the time to reflect on my ideas. On 24 April 2015 at 19:00, Neil Horman wrote: > DPDK will always be > something of a niche market for user to whoom every last ounce of > performance is > the primary requirement This does seem like an excellent position. It is succinct, it sets expectations for users, and it tells developers how to resolve trade-offs (performance takes priority over FOO, for all values of FOO). I agree that this niche will always be there and so it seems like there is a permanent place in the world for DPDK. This focus on performance also makes DPDK useful as a reference for other projects. People making trade-offs between performance and other factors (portability, compatibility, simplicity, etc) can use DPDK as a yardstick to estimate what this costs. This benefits everybody doing networking on x86. I suppose that a separate discussion would be how to increase participation from people who are using DPDK as a reference but not as a software dependency. That is perhaps a less pressing topic for the future. OVS is a great example here. If we can make it easy for them to use DPDK > to get > better performance, I think we'll see a larger uptake in adoption. > I will be interested to see how this plays out. I agree it is a great opportunity for DPDK and a chance to take it mainstream. I also think it is fundamentally a missed opportunity of the kernel. OVS would be just fine with a kernel data plane that performs adequately. OVS users don't seem to be in the "maximum performance at any cost" niche defined above. Many of them benefit a lot from the kernel integration. However, if the kernel can't promise the meet their performance requirements then DPDK does seem like a knight in shining armour. It's an exciting time in open source networking :-) Cheers, -Luke