[RFC PATCH v2 00/11] Device Memory TCP

[David Laight]

From: Mina Almasry
> Sent: 10 August 2023 02:58
...
> * TL;DR:
> 
> Device memory TCP (devmem TCP) is a proposal for transferring data to and/or
> from device memory efficiently, without bouncing the data to a host memory
> buffer.

Doesn't that really require peer-to-peer PCIe transfers?
IIRC these aren't supported by many root hubs and have
fundamental flow control and/or TLP credit problems.

I'd guess they are also pretty incompatible with IOMMU?

I can see how you might manage to transmit frames from
some external memory (eg after encryption) but surely
processing receive data that way needs the packets
be filtered by both IP addresses and port numbers before
being redirected to the (presumably limited) external
memory.

OTOH isn't the kernel going to need to run code before
the packet is actually sent and just after it is received?
So all you might gain is a bit of latency?
And a bit less utilisation of host memory??
But if your system is really limited by cpu-memory bandwidth
you need more cache :-)

So how much benefit is there over efficient use of host
memory bounce buffers??

	David

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