Hi all, I wanted to raise the question of similarities between virtio and new zero copy af_packet interfaces.
First I would like to mention that virtio device development isn't spec limited - spec is there to help interoperability and add peace of mind for people worried about IPR. So I tend to accept patches without requiring people write it up in the spec as work on spec proceeds at its own pace - all I ask is that the virtio mailing list is copied, this requires contributor to subscribe and in the process contributor promises that it's ok for us to add this to spec in the future. There shouldn't thus be a fundamental problem preventing use of virtio format or reusing some of the code for af_packet, but it still might or might not make sense - it was designed for CPU to CPU communication so it seems to make sense though. So I would like that discussion to happen even if we decide against. And even if people decide against, the problem space is very similar. You can look up packed ring layout proposal v2 - should I repost here? Our prototyping shows significant performance improvements from using it as compared to head/tail layout. To start this discission I'm going to reply to this email reposting a copy of the simplified virtio layout that might be appropriate for af_packet as well. -- MST
