Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1756186AbZDNVxM (ORCPT ); Tue, 14 Apr 2009 17:53:12 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1753466AbZDNVwv (ORCPT ); Tue, 14 Apr 2009 17:52:51 -0400 Received: from ovro.ovro.caltech.edu ([192.100.16.2]:44299 "EHLO ovro.ovro.caltech.edu" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751630AbZDNVwu (ORCPT ); Tue, 14 Apr 2009 17:52:50 -0400 Message-ID: <49E505B3.5070005@ovro.caltech.edu> Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 14:52:51 -0700 From: David Hawkins User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.21 (Windows/20090302) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Grant Likely CC: Ira Snyder , Arnd Bergmann , Jan-Bernd Themann , netdev@vger.kernel.org, Rusty Russell , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linuxppc-dev@ozlabs.org Subject: Re: [RFC v2] virtio: add virtio-over-PCI driver References: <20090224000002.GA578@ovro.caltech.edu> <49E4FED0.1020003@ovro.caltech.edu> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Greylist: Sender IP whitelisted, not delayed by milter-greylist-4.0 (ovro.ovro.caltech.edu); Tue, 14 Apr 2009 14:52:50 -0700 (PDT) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1583 Lines: 39 Hi Grant, > Thanks David. I haven't looked closely at the xilinx pci data sheet > yet, but I don't expect too many issues in this area. As you say, it > won't take much to code it up. I'll be poking my VHDL engineer to > make it do what I want it to. :-) The key aspects of the core will be that it is Master/Target so that it can take over the PCI bus, and that it has a DMA engine that can take care of most of the work. In your case, since you have a DMA controller on the host (MPC5200) and the target (Xilinx), your driver might end up having nicer symmetry than our application. The most efficient implementation will be the one that uses PCI writes, i.e., MPC5200 DMAs to the Xilinx core, and the Xilinx core DMAs to the MPC5200. If you use a PCI Target only core, then the MPC5200 DMA controller will have to do all the work, and read transfers might be slightly less efficient. Our target boards (PowerPC) live in compactPCI backplanes and talk to x86 boards that do not have DMA controllers. So the PCI target board DMA controllers are used to transfer data efficiently to the x86 host (writes) and less efficiently from the host to the boards (reads). Our bandwidth requirements are 'to the host', so we can live with the asymmetry in performance. > I'll keep you up to date on my progress. Sounds good. Cheers, Dave -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/