46. Berkeley Packet Filter Library

The DPDK provides an BPF library that gives the ability to load and execute Enhanced Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF) bytecode within user-space dpdk application.

It supports basic set of features from eBPF spec. Please refer to the eBPF spec <https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/networking/filter.txt> for more information. Also it introduces basic framework to load/unload BPF-based filters on eth devices (right now only via SW RX/TX callbacks).

The library API provides the following basic operations:

• Create a new BPF execution context and load user provided eBPF code into it.
• Destroy an BPF execution context and its runtime structures and free the associated memory.
• Execute eBPF bytecode associated with provided input parameter.
• Provide information about natively compiled code for given BPF context.
• Load BPF program from the ELF file and install callback to execute it on given ethdev port/queue.

46.1. Not currently supported eBPF features

• JIT for non X86_64 platforms
• cBPF
• tail-pointer call
• eBPF MAP
• skb
• external function calls for 32-bit platforms