Re: [PATCH rdma-next 0/6] Add support for TLP emulation

From: Keith Busch

Date: Fri Feb 27 2026 - 16:37:53 EST


On Wed, Feb 25, 2026 at 04:19:30PM +0200, Leon Romanovsky wrote:
> This series adds support for Transaction Layer Packet (TLP) emulation
> response gateway regions, enabling userspace device emulation software
> to write TLP responses directly to lower layers without kernel driver
> involvement.
>
> Currently, the mlx5 driver exposes VirtIO emulation access regions via
> the MLX5_IB_METHOD_VAR_OBJ_ALLOC ioctl. This series extends that
> ioctl to also support allocating TLP response gateway channels for
> PCI device emulation use cases.

Sorry if this is obvious to people in the know, but could you possibly
give a quick high level description of the use case behind this feature?
I'm just curious what emulation needs are enabled by having access to
this packet level. Thanks!