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

[Christoph Lameter <cl@gentwo.org>]

On Wed, 11 Jun 2014, Greg KH wrote:

> > 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?

Block and networking mainly. The userspace VFIO API exposes device
specific registers. We need something that is a decent abstraction.
IBverbs is something like that but it could be done much better.