Re: I/OAT ... Coming Soon ?

On Nov 15, 2007 4:04 PM, Andre Oppermann <andre_at_freebsd.org> wrote:
> Jack Vogel wrote:
> > On Nov 14, 2007 5:01 PM, Wilkinson, Alex
> > <Alex.Wilkinson_at_dsto.defence.gov.au> wrote:
> >> Hi all,
> >>
> >> Curious, is I/OAT [http://www.intel.com/go/ioat/] coming to FreeBSD soon
> >> ?
> >
> > LOL, I did a driver for the first version of I/OAT more than a year
> > ago, submitted it and interest was half hearted.
>
> IMHO the biggest drawback (design failure) is the polling requirement
> for the work queue.  Ideally it would be structured like a NIC with
> its DMA engine and rings.

I know, at the time I did this Chris Leech the Linux developer was having
trouble with an interrupt design, so I figured I'd not bang my head against
the wall unnecessarily and follow what he was doing :)

Since then however, work has been done and particularly with the CB2
support I believe Linux now does use interrupts, so if I go back and rework
the driver I will try and follow that path.

There is a goodly amount of work to do this justice, and I have been busy
with new NIC hardware so much lately, but I hope to come up for air soon
so I will try and get this off the queue :)

Cheers,

Jack

> > The driver needs updating and polishing yet, but interest being what it was
> > it hasn't been a real high priority.