[dpdk-dev] DPDK Bare Metal

[Antti Kantee]

Daniel,

On 16/05/14 22:16, daniel chapiesky wrote:
> We are interested in finding out how much we can decrease the attack surface
> of our application by going full bare metal.. (i.e. sans OS).   The mention
> of a bare metal version of dpdk is one of the contributing factors for our
> working on our prototype.
>
> Can you please provide any information on the dpdk bare metal version?
> Such as:

I don't know about _the_ bare metal version, but if I'm allowed to 
advertise a project I'm working on, I'll mention _a_ potential bare 
metal version:

The goal of rump kernels (http://rumpkernel.org/) is to provide an OS 
quality driver stack without the OS (hence *rump* kernels).  The TCP/IP 
stack provided by rump kernels already integrates with DPDK, and many 
existing POSIX-y apps "just work" on top of rump kernels in an OS-less 
environment.  It's no stretch to imagine DPDK running on a bare metal 
rump kernel platform, TCP/IP optional.

> 1) is it in fact - a zero OS version or is it based on a RTOS such as
> those from Wind River.
>
> 2) Does the bare metal version only support one kind of processor family
> such
> as i7, or is it possible to target atom or arm with it as well?
>
> 3) what are the licensing terms for it?
>
> 4) are royalties required?

Rump kernels are [based on] NetBSD, so there's support for a variety of 
architectures, including Intel, ARM, MIPS, etc.  Everything is open 
source and BSD-licensed, no royalties.  However, since the idea of the 
open source project is to provide a driver stack instead of ready-baked 
solutions, you have to write (or copypaste) the lowest bootstrap/machine 
layer yourself (*).  The good news is that, speaking from experience, 
the required lowlevel support is a simple few-nighter.

   - antti

*) feel free to call that development investment a licensing fee if it 
translates better to your finance department