Re: [PATCH net-next] net: ucc_geth: Batch RX packets before stack handoff

[LEROY Christophe <christophe.leroy2@cs-soprasteria.com>]

Hi Jakub,

Le 21/05/2026 à 02:45, Jakub Kicinski a écrit :
> On Wed, 20 May 2026 17:39:41 -0700 Rosen Penev wrote:
>>> On Sun, 17 May 2026 12:28:56 -0700 Rosen Penev wrote:
>>>> Collect received skbs on a local list during RX polling and pass the
>>>> completed batch to netif_receive_skb_list(). This lets the networking
>>>> stack process packets from a poll cycle in bulk instead of handing each
>>>> skb up individually.
>>>
>>> GRO should be even better.
>> GRO will result in slower routing performance because there is no
>> hardware checksum.
> 
> Mention this in the commit message too.
> Network adapters without checksum offload are pretty rare these days.
> Speaking of being old, do you know if this driver is used in practice?
> Maybe we can delete it.
> 

That's way too early to remove that driver.

UCC is what provides Ethernet connectivity in the powerpc MPC83xx CPU 
family. This family has just been declared End Of Life by January this 
year with a Last Time Buy Date 30 Jul 2026 and Last Time Delivery Date 
by 30 Apr 2027. We have that CPU on hundreds of boards spread all over 
Europe and have to maintain those systems for the next 10 to 15 years if 
not even more.

So we can maybe reconsider removing that driver by 2040 but unlikely before.

Christophe