Re: [patch net-next 0/9] net: sched: introduce chain templates support with offloading to mlxsw

[Jiri Pirko <jiri@resnulli.us>]

Tue, Jun 26, 2018 at 09:00:45AM CEST, jakub.kicinski@netronome.com wrote:
>On Mon, Jun 25, 2018 at 11:43 PM, Jiri Pirko <jiri@resnulli.us> wrote:
>> Tue, Jun 26, 2018 at 06:58:50AM CEST, jakub.kicinski@netronome.com wrote:
>>>On Mon, 25 Jun 2018 23:01:39 +0200, Jiri Pirko wrote:
>>>> From: Jiri Pirko <jiri@mellanox.com>
>>>>
>>>> For the TC clsact offload these days, some of HW drivers need
>>>> to hold a magic ball. The reason is, with the first inserted rule inside
>>>> HW they need to guess what fields will be used for the matching. If
>>>> later on this guess proves to be wrong and user adds a filter with a
>>>> different field to match, there's a problem. Mlxsw resolves it now with
>>>> couple of patterns. Those try to cover as many match fields as possible.
>>>> This aproach is far from optimal, both performance-wise and scale-wise.
>>>> Also, there is a combination of filters that in certain order won't
>>>> succeed.
>>>>
>>>> Most of the time, when user inserts filters in chain, he knows right away
>>>> how the filters are going to look like - what type and option will they
>>>> have. For example, he knows that he will only insert filters of type
>>>> flower matching destination IP address. He can specify a template that
>>>> would cover all the filters in the chain.
>>>
>>>Perhaps it's lack of sleep, but this paragraph threw me a little off
>>>the track.  IIUC the goal of this set is to provide a way to inform the
>>>HW about expected matches before any rule is programmed into the HW.
>>>Not before any rule is added to a particular chain.  One can just use
>>>the first rule in the chain to make a guess about the chain, but thanks
>>>to this set user can configure *all* chains before any rules are added.
>>
>> The template is per-chain. User can use template for chain x and
>> not-use it for chain y. Up to him.
>
>Makes sense.
>
>I can't help but wonder if it'd be better to associate the
>constraints/rules with chains instead of creating a new "template"
>object.  It seems more natural to create a chain with specific
>constraints in place than add and delete template of which there can
>be at most one to a chain...  Perhaps that's more about the user space
>tc command line.  Anyway, not a strong objection, just a thought.

Hmm. I don't think it is good idea. User should see the template in a
"show" command per chain. We would have to have 2 show commands, one to
list the template objects and one to list templates per chains. It makes
things more complicated for no good reason. I think that this simple
chain-lock is easier and serves the purpose.

>
>>>And that's needed because once any rule is added the tcam config can no
>>>longer be easily modified?
>>
>> Yes.