[dpdk-dev] Reg DPDK & PMD
Wiles, Keith
keith.wiles at intel.com
Wed Mar 8 15:37:26 CET 2017
> On Mar 8, 2017, at 8:25 AM, Ferruh Yigit <ferruh.yigit at intel.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/8/2017 1:35 PM, raman geetha gopalakrishnan wrote:
>> Hi All,
>>
>> I have the following basic question. Hope to get an answer / link where i
>> can get myself clear.
>>
>> 1. In DPDK PMD is optimized driver for an given NIC to get maximum
>> performance.
>> That being the case why we are talking about DPDK supported NICs.
>>
>> A) My assumption is that NIC interface is standardized so that PMD
>> should actually work with any NIC (barring some NIC specific performance
>> tweaks)
>> is that correct?
>
> PMDs (Poll Mode Drivers) are _real_ device drivers, they are not an
> optimization layer on top off a standardized interface, they deal
> directly with hardware, so needs to be specific to hardware.
>
>>
>> B) if #A is correct , how can i make changes to PMD to support any NIC
>> ?
>>
>> if i have to put the above question in different way then it is
>>
>> 2. what is preventing us from having a common PMD layer for all NICs and
>> additional PMD specific to each NIC???
Another minor point is DPDK has a generic API layer for the ethernet NICs it is called ethdev with a set of standard APIs for the application. The PMDs attached themselves to the ethdev using standardized APIs, which is about as close we can get to a standard interface to PMDs/hardware.
>>
>> Thanks
>> Raman
>>
>
Regards,
Keith
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