[dpdk-dev] [PATCH] librte_pmd_packet: add PMD for AF_PACKET-based virtual devices

[John W. Linville]

On Fri, Jul 11, 2014 at 03:26:39PM +0200, Thomas Monjalon wrote:
> 2014-07-10 16:32, John W. Linville:
> > This is a Linux-specific virtual PMD driver backed by an AF_PACKET
> > socket.  This implementation uses mmap'ed ring buffers to limit copying
> > and user/kernel transitions.  The PACKET_FANOUT_HASH behavior of
> > AF_PACKET is used for frame reception.  In the current implementation,
> > Tx and Rx queues are always paired, and therefore are always equal
> > in number -- changing this would be a Simple Matter Of Programming.
> > 
> > Interfaces of this type are created with a command line option like
> > "--vdev=eth_packet0,iface=...".  There are a number of options availabe
> > as arguments:
> > 
> >  - Interface is chosen by "iface" (required)
> >  - Number of queue pairs set by "qpairs" (optional, default: 16)
> >  - AF_PACKET MMAP block size set by "blocksz" (optional, default: 4096)
> >  - AF_PACKET MMAP frame size set by "framesz" (optional, default: 2048)
> >  - AF_PACKET MMAP frame count set by "framecnt" (optional, default: 512)
> > 
> > Signed-off-by: John W. Linville <linville at tuxdriver.com>
> > ---
> > This PMD is intended to provide a means for using DPDK on a broad
> > range of hardware without hardware-specific PMDs and (hopefully)
> > with better performance than what PCAP offers in Linux.  This might
> > be useful as a development platform for DPDK applications when
> > DPDK-supported hardware is expensive or unavailable.
> 
> Thank you for this nice work.
> 
> I think it would be well suited to host this PMD as an external one in order 
> to make it work also with DPDK 1.7.0.

I'm not sure I understand the suggestion -- you don't want to merge
the driver for 1.8?  Or you just want to host this patch somewhere,
so people can still use it w/ 1.7?

John
-- 
John W. Linville		Someday the world will need a hero, and you
linville at tuxdriver.com			might be all we have.  Be ready.