[RFC] ethdev: fast path async flow API

[Dariusz Sosnowski]

Hi Stephen,

Sorry for such a late response.

From: Stephen Hemminger <stephen at networkplumber.org>
Sent: Thursday, January 4, 2024 02:08
> On Wed, 3 Jan 2024 19:14:49 +0000
> Dariusz Sosnowski <dsosnowski at nvidia.com> wrote:
> > In summary, in my opinion extending the async flow API with bulking
> capabilities or exposing the queue directly to the application is not desirable.
> > This proposal aims to reduce the I-cache overhead in async flow API by
> reusing the existing design pattern in DPDK - fast path functions are inlined to
> the application code and they call cached PMD callbacks.
> 
> Inline needs to more discouraged in DPDK, because it only works if application
> ends up building with DPDK from source.
> It doesn't work for the Linux distro packaging model and symbol versioning,
> etc.

I understand the problem. In that case, I have a proposal.
I had a chat with Thomas regarding this RFC, and he noticed that there are 2 separate changes proposed here:

1. Per-port callbacks for async flow API.
    - Moves specified callbacks to rte_flow_fp_ops struct and allow PMDs to register them dynamically.
    - Removes indirection at API level - no need to call rte_flow_ops_get().
    - Removes checking if callbacks are defined - either the default DPDK callback is used or the one provided by PMD.
2. Make async flow API functions inlineable.

Change (1) won't break ABI (existing callbacks in rte_flow_ops can be marked as deprecated for now and phased out later) and in my opinion is less controversial compared to change (2).

I'll rerun the benchmarks for both changes separately to compare their benefits in isolation.
This would allow us to decide if change (2) is worth the drawbacks it introduces.

What do you think?

Best regards,
Dariusz Sosnowski