.. SPDX-License-Identifier: BSD-3-Clause Copyright 2019 NXP PFE Poll Mode Driver ====================== The PFE NIC PMD (**librte_net_pfe**) provides poll mode driver support for the inbuilt NIC found in the **NXP LS1012** SoC. More information can be found at `NXP Official Website `_. This section provides an overview of the NXP PFE and how it is integrated into the DPDK. Contents summary - PFE overview - Supported PFE SoCs - PFE features - Prerequisites - Driver compilation and testing - Limitations PFE Overview ------------ PFE is a hardware programmable packet forwarding engine to provide high performance Ethernet interfaces. The diagram below shows a system level overview of PFE: .. code-block:: console ====================================================+=============== US +-----------------------------------------+ | Kernel Space | | | | PFE Ethernet Driver | | +-----------------------------------------+ | ^ | ^ | | PFE RXQ| |TXQ RXQ| |TXQ | PMD | | | | | | v | v | +----------+ +---------+ +----------+ | | pfe.ko | | net_pfe0| | net_pfe1 | | +----------+ +---------+ +----------+ | ^ | ^ | | TXQ| |RXQ TXQ| |RXQ | | | | | | | v | v | +------------------------+ | | | | | PFE HIF driver | | +------------------------+ | ^ | | RX | TX | | RING| RING| | | v | +--------------+ | | | | ==================| HIF |==================+=============== +-----------+ +--------------+ | | | | HW | PFE +--------------+ | | +-----+ +-----+ | | | MAC | | MAC | | | | | | | | +-------+-----+----------------+-----+----+ | PHY | | PHY | +-----+ +-----+ The HIF, PFE, MAC and PHY are the hardware blocks, the pfe.ko is a kernel module, the PFE HIF driver and the PFE ethernet driver combined represent as DPDK PFE poll mode driver are running in the userspace. The PFE hardware supports one HIF (host interface) RX ring and one TX ring to send and receive packets through packet forwarding engine. Both network interface traffic is multiplexed and send over HIF queue. net_pfe0 and net_pfe1 are logical ethernet interfaces, created by HIF client driver. HIF driver is responsible for send and receive packets between host interface and these logical interfaces. PFE ethernet driver is a hardware independent and register with the HIF client driver to transmit and receive packets from HIF via logical interfaces. pfe.ko is required for PHY initialisation and also responsible for creating the character device "pfe_us_cdev" which will be used for interacting with the kernel layer for link status. Supported PFE SoCs ------------------ - LS1012 PFE Features ------------ - L3/L4 checksum offload - Packet type parsing - Basic stats - MTU update - Promiscuous mode - Allmulticast mode - Link status - ARMv8 Prerequisites ------------- Below are some pre-requisites for executing PFE PMD on a PFE compatible board: #. **ARM 64 Tool Chain** For example, the `*aarch64* Linaro Toolchain `_. #. **Linux Kernel** It can be obtained from `NXP's Github hosting `_. #. **Rootfile system** Any *aarch64* supporting filesystem can be used. For example, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial) or 18.04 (Bionic) userland which can be obtained from `here `_. #. The ethernet device will be registered as virtual device, so pfe has dependency on **rte_bus_vdev** library and it is mandatory to use `--vdev` with value `net_pfe` to run DPDK application. The following dependencies are not part of DPDK and must be installed separately: - **NXP Linux LSDK** NXP Layerscape software development kit (LSDK) includes support for family of QorIQ® ARM-Architecture-based system on chip (SoC) processors and corresponding boards. It includes the Linux board support packages (BSPs) for NXP SoCs, a fully operational tool chain, kernel and board specific modules. LSDK and related information can be obtained from: `LSDK `_ - **pfe kernel module** pfe kernel module can be obtained from NXP Layerscape software development kit at location `/lib/modules//kernel/drivers/staging/fsl_ppfe` in rootfs. Module should be loaded using below command: .. code-block:: console insmod pfe.ko us=1 Driver compilation and testing ------------------------------ Follow instructions available in the document :ref:`compiling and testing a PMD for a NIC ` to launch **testpmd** Additionally, PFE driver needs `--vdev` as an input with value `net_pfe` to execute DPDK application. There is an optional parameter `intf` available to specify port ID. PFE driver supports only two interfaces, so valid values for `intf` are 0 and 1. see the command below: .. code-block:: console --vdev="net_pfe0,intf=0" --vdev="net_pfe1,intf=1" -- ... Limitations ----------- - Multi buffer pool cannot be supported.