[dpdk-dev] [RFC] Service Cores concept

[Harry van Haaren]

This RFC introduces the concept of a service-core. A service core
invokes a function when an lcore is required to perform some work.

An example use-case is the eventdev; with the octeontx PMD, events are
scheduled in the hardware. With the software eventdev PMD an lcore is
required to perform this scheduling behaviour. Similar software schemes
can be applied for Traffic-Management/QoS for example.

The concept is to allow a software function register itself with EAL as
a "service", which requires CPU time to perform its duties. Multiple
services can be registered in an application, if more than one service
exists. The application can retrieve a list of services, and decide how
many "service cores" to use. The number of service cores is removed
from the application usage, and they are mapped to services based on
an application supplied coremask.

The application now continues as normal, without having to manually
schedule and implement arbitration of CPU time for the SW services.

Please note this is an RFC, and API updates to make it cleaner (moving
things to private .h files etc) are expected. Think about the concept
first - then look at the detail :)

This RFC addresses the discussion in this thread (split over two months),
and participants of those discussions are on --cc:
http://dpdk.org/ml/archives/dev/2017-April/064544.html
http://dpdk.org/ml/archives/dev/2017-May/065176.html

Regards, -Harry

Harry van Haaren (1):
  RFC: service core concept header implementation

 lib/librte_eal/common/include/rte_service.h | 211 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 211 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 lib/librte_eal/common/include/rte_service.h

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2.7.4