Re: [PATCH net-next 00/16] nfp: ctrl vNIC

[David Miller <davem@davemloft.net>]

From: Jakub Kicinski <jakub.kicinski@netronome.com>
Date: Mon,  5 Jun 2017 17:01:41 -0700

> This series adds the ability to use one vNIC as a control channel
> for passing messages to and from the application firmware.  The
> implementation restructures the existing netdev vNIC code to be able
> to deal with nfp_nets with netdev pointer set to NULL.  Control vNICs
> are not visible to userspace (other than for dumping ring state), and
> since they don't have netdevs we use a tasklet for RX and simple skb 
> list for TX queuing.
> 
> Due to special status of the control vNIC we have to reshuffle the
> init code a bit to make sure control vNIC will be fully brought up
> (and therefore communication with app FW can happen) before any netdev
> or port is visible to user space.
> 
> FW will designate which vNIC is supposed to be used as control one
> by setting _pf%u_net_ctrl_bar symbol.  Some FWs depend on metadata
> being prepended to control message, some prefer to look at queue ID
> to decide that something is a control message.  Our implementation
> can cater to both.
> 
> First two users of this code will be eBPF maps and flower offloads.

Ok, I read this over and also checked out your discussion with Jiri.
So far this looks OK to me, so series applied.

I look forward to seeing the eBPF maps and flower follow-on stuff.