While some applications may store metadata about packets in the packet
mbuf headroom, this is not a workable solution for packet metadata which
is either:
* larger than the headroom (or headroom is needed for adding pkt headers)
* needs to be shared or copied among packets
To support these use cases in applications, we reserve a general
"userdata" pointer field inside the second cache-line of the mbuf. This
is better than having the application store the pointer to the external
metadata in the packet headroom, as it saves an additional cache-line
from being used.
Apart from storing metadata, this field also provides a general 8-byte
scratch space inside the mbuf for any other application uses that are
applicable.
Signed-off-by: Bruce Richardson <bruce.richardson@intel.com>
Acked-by: Pablo de Lara <pablo.de.lara.guarch@intel.com>
4cd917b308