[Intel-wired-lan] [iwl-next v4 1/1] iidc/ice/irdma: Update IDC to support multiple consumers

[Samudrala, Sridhar]

On 3/18/2025 10:20 AM, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 18, 2025 at 10:01:36AM -0700, Samudrala, Sridhar wrote:
> 
>> Yes. Today irdma uses exported symbols from i40e and ice and loading irdma
>> results in both modules to be loaded even when only type of NIC is present
>> on a system. This series is trying to remove that dependency by using
>> callbacks.
> 
> If you really have two different core drivers that can provide the
> same API then I think you are stuck with function pointers :\
> 
> It is really weird though, why are their two core drivers that can
> provide the same API? Is this because intel keeps rewriting their
> driver stack every few years?

This is a known issue due to HW/FW interface changes across multiple 
generations of the NICs forcing us to go with separate core drivers.

We are working with HW/FW teams to avoid this in future and going 
forward we expect to have idpf/ixd as the 2 drivers (idpf providing the 
data path functionality and ixd as the control/data/switchdev port-rep 
driver) for all our future FNICs/IPUs.

Leon, Could you approve the callbacks approach considering that irdma 
needs to support multiple intel nic core drivers. We would really 
appreciate it.

-SridharW