RE: [EXTERNAL] Re: [net-next PATCH v4 02/10] octeontx2-pf: RVU representor driver

[Geethasowjanya Akula]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jakub Kicinski <kuba@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Friday, May 10, 2024 9:05 AM
> To: Geethasowjanya Akula <gakula@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: netdev@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; linux-kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx;
> davem@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; pabeni@xxxxxxxxxx; edumazet@xxxxxxxxxx; Sunil
> Kovvuri Goutham <sgoutham@xxxxxxxxxxx>; Subbaraya Sundeep Bhatta
> <sbhatta@xxxxxxxxxxx>; Hariprasad Kelam <hkelam@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: [net-next PATCH v4 02/10] octeontx2-pf: RVU
> representor driver
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> On Tue, 7 May 2024 22:09:13 +0530 Geetha sowjanya wrote:
> > This patch adds basic driver for the RVU representor.
> > Driver on probe does pci specific initialization and does hw resources
> > configuration.
> > Introduces RVU_ESWITCH kernel config to enable/disable this driver.
> > Representor and NIC shares the code but representors netdev support
> > subset of NIC functionality. Hence "otx2_rep_dev"
> > api helps to skip the features initialization that are not supported
> > by the representors.
> 
> It's quite unusual to have a separate PCI device for representors.
> Why not extend the existing PF driver?
> This driver spawns no netdevs by default?

Sorry.. strangely this email went into spam folder, and I didn't check till now.

Our's is a multi-PF device and each of the PF has it's own VFs.
And in HW, packet parser identifies pkts sent or received by each of these PF/VFs by a unique PF_FUNC (15-11bits PF & 10-0bits PFs' VF).
If representor netdev is registered from a separate PF (ie a separate PF_FUNC) then at packet parser it's easy to install pkt forwarding rules.
eg: representee <=> representor