Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 0/5][RFC] virtio-net: MAC filtering

[Paul Brook]

> >> A concern here is the growing size of the virtio-net I/O port space
> >> config.  This series brings it up to 256 bytes with PCI resource
> >
> > This is one reason why IO ports are a reallybad idea. Use memory mapped
> > register spaces like any other sane system and you won't have a problem.
>
> IO ports are much faster for notification than MMIO in KVM which is why
> the space is currently IO ports.  It was never meant to hold very large
> amounts of data.

Huh, I'm surprised it makes any real difference. Other that initial setup, 
isn't it just used to "kick" the devieonce after new dscriptors have been 
added to the ring buffer? I'd expect to be a fairly expensive operation 
(bouncing back to userspace).

Paul