[dpdk-dev] plumbing say test-pmd for non-Intel NICs(drivers)

[Antti Kantee]

On 29.05.2013 10:27, somnath kotur wrote:
> Hi,
>    Pls pardon me if this has been asked/addressed in another thread. Just
> wanted to know what i need to do if i wanted to plumb my non-Intel 10G NIC
> into the DPDK , For instance just into the test-pmd framework would also be
> fine ?
> Any pointers /tips welcome?

Hi,

In short, you'd have to write/port a driver for the NIC.  I very 
recently did this for the purpose of testing DPDK in a virtual machine 
(*).  That said, I got off easy since almost all of the driver code 
already existed, and I only had to make minor edits and redo the parts 
involved with DMA descriptors.

If you have an understanding of how NIC drivers work, it will take a 
varying amount of effort depending on the amount of driver you can 
copypaste from other sources.  However, there's no way around having to 
know how drivers work.

   - antti

*) https://github.com/anttikantee/dpdk-wm