Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [CORE TOPIC] Redesign Memory Management layer and more core subsystem

["John W. Linville" <linville@tuxdriver.com>]

On Wed, Jun 11, 2014 at 12:45:04PM -0700, Greg KH wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 11, 2014 at 02:03:05PM -0500, Christoph Lameter wrote:
> > 6. Direct hardware access
> > 
> > Often the kernel subsystems are impeding performance. In high speed
> > computing we regularly bypass the kernel network subsystems, block I/O
> > etc. Direct hardware access means though that one is explosed to the ugly
> > particularities of how a certain device has to be handled. Can we have the
> > cake and eat it too by defining APIs that allow low level hardware access
> > but also provide hardware abstraction (maybe limited to certain types of
> > devices).
> 
> What type of devices are you wanting here, block and networking or
> something else?  We have the uio interface if you want to (and know how
> to) talk to your hardware directly from userspace, what else do you want
> to do here that this doesn't provide?

AF_PACKET provides some level of hardware abstraction without a lot of
overhead for networking apps that are prepared to deal with raw frames.
Is this the kind of networking API you would propose?

John
-- 
John W. Linville		Someday the world will need a hero, and you
linville@tuxdriver.com			might be all we have.  Be ready.