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Tomasz Kulasek ad5fd43ba1 doc: announce ABI change for Tx preparation
This is an ABI deprecation notice for DPDK 16.11 in librte_ether about
changes in rte_eth_dev and rte_eth_desc_lim structures.

As discussed in that thread:

http://dpdk.org/ml/archives/dev/2015-September/023603.html

Different NIC models depending on HW offload requested might impose
different requirements on packets to be TX-ed in terms of:

 - Max number of fragments per packet allowed
 - Max number of fragments per TSO segments
 - The way pseudo-header checksum should be pre-calculated
 - L3/L4 header fields filling
 - etc.

MOTIVATION:
-----------

1) Some work cannot (and didn't should) be done in rte_eth_tx_burst.
   However, this work is sometimes required, and now, it's an
   application issue.

2) Different hardware may have different requirements for TX offloads,
   other subset can be supported and so on.

3) Some parameters (eg. number of segments in ixgbe driver) may hung
   device. These parameters may be vary for different devices.

   For example i40e HW allows 8 fragments per packet, but that is after
   TSO segmentation. While ixgbe has a 38-fragment pre-TSO limit.

4) Fields in packet may require different initialization (like eg. will
   require pseudo-header checksum precalculation, sometimes in a
   different way depending on packet type, and so on). Now application
   needs to care about it.

5) Using additional API (rte_eth_tx_prep) before rte_eth_tx_burst let to
   prepare packet burst in acceptable form for specific device.

6) Some additional checks may be done in debug mode keeping tx_burst
   implementation clean.

PROPOSAL:
---------

To help user to deal with all these varieties we propose to:

1. Introduce rte_eth_tx_prep() function to do necessary preparations of
   packet burst to be safely transmitted on device for desired HW
   offloads (set/reset checksum field according to the hardware
   requirements) and check HW constraints (number of segments per
   packet, etc).

   While the limitations and requirements may differ for devices, it
   requires to extend rte_eth_dev structure with new function pointer
   "tx_pkt_prep" which can be implemented in the driver to prepare and
   verify packets, in devices specific way, before burst, what should to
   prevent application to send malformed packets.

2. Also new fields will be introduced in rte_eth_desc_lim:
   nb_seg_max and nb_mtu_seg_max, providing an information about max
   segments in TSO and non-TSO packets acceptable by device.

   This information is useful for application to not create/limit
   malicious packet.

APPLICATION (CASE OF USE):
--------------------------

1) Application should to initialize burst of packets to send, set
   required tx offload flags and required fields, like l2_len, l3_len,
   l4_len, and tso_segsz

2) Application passes burst to the rte_eth_tx_prep to check conditions
   required to send packets through the NIC.

3) The result of rte_eth_tx_prep can be used to send valid packets
   and/or restore invalid if function fails.

eg.

	for (i = 0; i < nb_pkts; i++) {

		/* initialize or process packet */

		bufs[i]->tso_segsz = 800;
		bufs[i]->ol_flags = PKT_TX_TCP_SEG | PKT_TX_IPV4
				| PKT_TX_IP_CKSUM;
		bufs[i]->l2_len = sizeof(struct ether_hdr);
		bufs[i]->l3_len = sizeof(struct ipv4_hdr);
		bufs[i]->l4_len = sizeof(struct tcp_hdr);
	}

	/* Prepare burst of TX packets */
	nb_prep = rte_eth_tx_prep(port, 0, bufs, nb_pkts);

	if (nb_prep < nb_pkts) {
		printf("tx_prep failed\n");

		/* drop or restore invalid packets */

	}

	/* Send burst of TX packets */
	nb_tx = rte_eth_tx_burst(port, 0, bufs, nb_prep);

	/* Free any unsent packets. */

Signed-off-by: Tomasz Kulasek <tomaszx.kulasek@intel.com>
Acked-by: Konstantin Ananyev <konstantin.ananyev@intel.com>
Acked-by: Thomas Monjalon <thomas.monjalon@6wind.com>
Acked-by: Olivier Matz <olivier.matz@6wind.com>
2016-07-28 19:58:51 +02:00
app mk: fix link with glibc < 2.17 2016-07-25 17:54:57 +02:00
buildtools unify tools naming 2016-07-22 22:31:02 +02:00
config net/virtio-user: fix missing default config value 2016-07-04 04:08:41 +02:00
doc doc: announce ABI change for Tx preparation 2016-07-28 19:58:51 +02:00
drivers net/i40e: fix metadata in first mbuf of scattered Rx 2016-07-28 18:11:56 +02:00
examples examples/ip_pipeline: fix flow classification config 2016-07-28 18:11:56 +02:00
lib ethdev: fix documentation for queue start/stop 2016-07-28 18:11:56 +02:00
mk mk: fix build with clang < 3.5 2016-07-25 17:48:35 +02:00
pkg version: 16.04 2016-04-11 23:56:34 +02:00
scripts scripts: validate ABI faster with parallel make jobs 2016-07-22 12:47:48 +02:00
tools unify tools naming 2016-07-22 22:31:02 +02:00
.gitignore init DPDK repository 2013-03-07 10:57:42 +01:00
GNUmakefile pmdinfogen: add buildtools and pmdinfogen utility 2016-07-06 22:34:39 +02:00
LICENSE.GPL doc: GPL/LGPL licenses 2013-07-25 14:43:06 +02:00
LICENSE.LGPL doc: fix file format (dos to unix) 2013-09-06 11:43:07 +02:00
MAINTAINERS maintainers: update email address 2016-07-28 18:03:03 +02:00
Makefile remove trailing whitespaces 2014-06-11 00:29:34 +02:00
README doc: add readme file 2015-12-13 22:06:58 +01:00

DPDK is a set of libraries and drivers for fast packet processing.
It supports many processor architectures and both FreeBSD and Linux.

The DPDK uses the Open Source BSD license for the core libraries and
drivers. The kernel components are GPLv2 licensed.

Please check the doc directory for release notes,
API documentation, and sample application information.

For questions and usage discussions, subscribe to: users@dpdk.org
Report bugs and issues to the development mailing list: dev@dpdk.org