Re: [PATCH net-next 03/10] devlink: Serialize access to rate domains

[Jakub Kicinski]

On Thu, 27 Feb 2025 13:22:25 +0100 Jiri Pirko wrote:
> >> I'm not sure how you imagine getting rid of them. One PCI PF
> >> instantiates one devlink now. There are lots of configuration (e.g. params)
> >> that is per-PF. You need this instance for that, how else would you do
> >> per-PF things on shared ASIC instance?  
> >
> >There are per-PF ports, right?  
> 
> Depends. On normal host sr-iov, no. On smartnic where you have PF in
> host, yes.

Yet another "great choice" in mlx5 other drivers have foreseen
problems with and avoided.

> >> Creating SFs is per-PF operation for example. I didn't to thorough
> >> analysis, but I'm sure there are couple of per-PF things like these.  
> >
> >Seems like adding a port attribute to SF creation would be a much
> >smaller extension than adding a layer of objects.
> >  
> >> Also not breaking the existing users may be an argument to keep per-PF
> >> instances.  
> >
> >We're talking about multi-PF devices only. Besides pretty sure we 
> >moved multiple params and health reporters to be per port, so IDK 
> >what changed now.  
> 
> Looks like pretty much all current NICs are multi-PFs, aren't they?

Not in a way which requires cross-port state sharing, no.
You should know this.