From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Jeff Garzik Subject: Re: The ultimate TOE design Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2004 17:23:49 -0400 Sender: netdev-bounce@oss.sgi.com Message-ID: <4148B2E5.50106@pobox.com> References: <4148991B.9050200@pobox.com> <1095275660.20569.0.camel@localhost.localdomain> <4148A90F.80003@pobox.com> <20040915140123.14185ede.davem@davemloft.net> <20040915210818.GA22649@havoc.gtf.org> <20040915141346.5c5e5377.davem@davemloft.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk, paul@clubi.ie, netdev@oss.sgi.com, leonid.grossman@s2io.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Return-path: To: "David S. Miller" In-Reply-To: <20040915141346.5c5e5377.davem@davemloft.net> Errors-to: netdev-bounce@oss.sgi.com List-Id: netdev.vger.kernel.org David S. Miller wrote: > On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 17:08:18 -0400 > Jeff Garzik wrote: > > >>There's nothing inherently wrong with sticking a computer running >>Linux inside another computer ;-) > > > And we already support that :-) > > Plus we have things like TSO too but that doesn't require a full Linux > instance to realize on a networking port. > Simple silicon implements this already. > I don't see how that differs from your "big MTU" ideas. Part of this is about how to talk to business people.... marketing. The typical definition of TOE is "offload 90+% of the net stack", as opposed to "TCP assist", which is stuff like TSO. If people ask about how to support TOE in Linux, you can say "sure, we _already_ support TOE, just stick Linux on a PCI card" rather than "no we don't support it." And wha-la, we support TOE with zero code changes ;-) Jeff, who would love to have a bunch of Athlons on PCI cards to play with.