Re: [PATCH v2 1/5] virtio: add functions for piecewise addition of buffers

[Stefan Hajnoczi]

On Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 1:04 PM, Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Il 19/12/2012 11:47, Stefan Hajnoczi ha scritto:
>> On Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 01:32:48PM +0100, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
>> What is the purpose of count_sg?
>
> It is needed to decide whether to use an indirect or a direct buffer.
> The idea is to avoid a memory allocation if the driver is providing us
> with separate sg elements (under the assumption that they will be few).

Ah, this makes sense now.  I saw it affects the decision whether to go
indirect or not but it wasn't obvious why.

> Originally I wanted to use a mix of direct and indirect buffer (direct
> if add_buf received a one-element scatterlist, otherwise indirect).  It
> would have had the same effect, without having to specify count_sg in
> advance.  The spec is not clear if that is allowed or not, but in the
> end they do not work with either QEMU or vhost, so I chose this
> alternative instead.

Okay.

Stefan
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/