2. SW Turbo Poll Mode Driver

The SW Turbo PMD (baseband_turbo_sw) provides a poll mode bbdev driver that utilizes Intel optimized libraries for LTE Layer 1 workloads acceleration. This PMD supports the functions: Turbo FEC, Rate Matching and CRC functions.

2.1. Features

SW Turbo PMD has support for the following capabilities:

For the encode operation:

  • RTE_BBDEV_TURBO_CRC_24A_ATTACH
  • RTE_BBDEV_TURBO_CRC_24B_ATTACH
  • RTE_BBDEV_TURBO_RATE_MATCH
  • RTE_BBDEV_TURBO_RV_INDEX_BYPASS

For the decode operation:

  • RTE_BBDEV_TURBO_SUBBLOCK_DEINTERLEAVE
  • RTE_BBDEV_TURBO_CRC_TYPE_24B
  • RTE_BBDEV_TURBO_POS_LLR_1_BIT_IN
  • RTE_BBDEV_TURBO_NEG_LLR_1_BIT_IN
  • RTE_BBDEV_TURBO_DEC_TB_CRC_24B_KEEP
  • RTE_BBDEV_TURBO_EARLY_TERMINATION

2.2. Limitations

  • In-place operations for Turbo encode and decode are not supported

2.3. Installation

2.3.1. FlexRAN SDK Download

To build DPDK with the baseband_turbo_sw PMD the user is required to download the export controlled FlexRAN SDK Libraries. An account at Intel Resource Design Center needs to be registered.

Once registered, the user needs to log in, and look for Intel FlexRAN Software Release Package -18-09 to download or directly through this link.

After download is complete, the user needs to unpack and compile on their system before building DPDK.

The following table maps DPDK versions with past FlexRAN SDK releases:

Table 2.1 DPDK and FlexRAN SDK releases compliance
DPDK version FlexRAN SDK release
18.02 1.3.0
18.05 1.4.0
18.08 1.6.0
19.02 18.09

2.3.2. FlexRAN SDK Installation

The following are pre-requisites for building FlexRAN SDK Libraries:
  1. An AVX2 supporting machine
  2. CentOS Linux release 7.2.1511 (Core) operating system
  3. Intel ICC 18.0.1 20171018 compiler installed

The following instructions should be followed in this exact order:

  1. Set the environment variables:

    source <path-to-icc-compiler-install-folder>/linux/bin/compilervars.sh intel64 -platform linux

  2. Extract the 605167-flexran-18-09-tar.gz package:

    mkdir FlexRAN-18.09
tar xvzf 605167-flexran-18-09-tar.gz -C FlexRAN-18.09/

  3. Run the SDK extractor script and accept the license:

    cd <path-to-workspace>/FlexRAN-18.09/
./SDK-18.09.sh

  4. Generate makefiles based on system configuration:

    cd <path-to-workspace>/FlexRAN-18.09/SDK-18.09/sdk/
./create-makefiles-linux.sh

  5. A build folder is generated in this form build-<ISA>-<CC>, enter that folder and install:

    cd build-avx2-icc/
make && make install

2.4. Initialization

In order to enable this virtual bbdev PMD, the user must:

  • Build the FLEXRAN SDK libraries (explained in Installation section).
  • Export the environmental variables FLEXRAN_SDK to the path where the FlexRAN SDK libraries were installed. And DIR_WIRELESS_SDK to the path where the libraries were extracted.

Example:

export FLEXRAN_SDK=<path-to-workspace>/FlexRAN-18.09/SDK-18.09/sdk/build-avx2-icc/install
export DIR_WIRELESS_SDK=<path-to-workspace>/FlexRAN-18.09/SDK-18.09/sdk/
  • Set CONFIG_RTE_LIBRTE_PMD_BBDEV_TURBO_SW=y in DPDK common configuration file config/common_base.

To use the PMD in an application, user must:

  • Call rte_vdev_init("baseband_turbo_sw") within the application.
  • Use --vdev="baseband_turbo_sw" in the EAL options, which will call rte_vdev_init() internally.

The following parameters (all optional) can be provided in the previous two calls:

  • socket_id: Specify the socket where the memory for the device is going to be allocated (by default, socket_id will be the socket where the core that is creating the PMD is running on).
  • max_nb_queues: Specify the maximum number of queues in the device (default is RTE_MAX_LCORE).

2.4.1. Example:

./test-bbdev.py -e="--vdev=baseband_turbo_sw,socket_id=0,max_nb_queues=8" \
-c validation -v ./turbo_*_default.data