22. ICE Poll Mode Driver
The ice PMD (librte_pmd_ice) provides poll mode driver support for 10/25 Gbps IntelĀ® Ethernet 810 Series Network Adapters based on the Intel Ethernet Controller E810.
22.1. Prerequisites
- Identifying your adapter using Intel Support and get the latest NVM/FW images.
- Follow the DPDK Getting Started Guide for Linux to setup the basic DPDK environment.
- To get better performance on Intel platforms, please follow the “How to get best performance with NICs on Intel platforms” section of the Getting Started Guide for Linux.
22.2. Pre-Installation Configuration
22.2.1. Config File Options
The following options can be modified in the config
file.
Please note that enabling debugging options may affect system performance.
CONFIG_RTE_LIBRTE_ICE_PMD
(defaulty
)Toggle compilation of the
librte_pmd_ice
driver.CONFIG_RTE_LIBRTE_ICE_DEBUG_*
(defaultn
)Toggle display of generic debugging messages.
CONFIG_RTE_LIBRTE_ICE_RX_ALLOW_BULK_ALLOC
(defaulty
)Toggle bulk allocation for RX.
CONFIG_RTE_LIBRTE_ICE_16BYTE_RX_DESC
(defaultn
)Toggle to use a 16-byte RX descriptor, by default the RX descriptor is 32 byte.
22.2.2. Runtime Config Options
Safe Mode Support
(default0
)If driver failed to load OS package, by default driver’s initialization failed. But if user intend to use the device without OS package, user can take
devargs
parametersafe-mode-support
, for example:-w 80:00.0,safe-mode-support=1
Then the driver will be initialized successfully and the device will enter Safe Mode. NOTE: In Safe mode, only very limited features are available, features like RSS, checksum, fdir, tunneling ... are all disabled.
22.3. Driver compilation and testing
Refer to the document compiling and testing a PMD for a NIC for details.
22.4. Features
22.4.1. Vector PMD
Vector PMD for RX and TX path are selected automatically. The paths are chosen based on 2 conditions.
CPU
On the X86 platform, the driver checks if the CPU supports AVX2. If it’s supported, AVX2 paths will be chosen. If not, SSE is chosen.Offload features
The supported HW offload features are described in the document ice_vec.ini. If any not supported features are used, ICE vector PMD is disabled and the normal paths are chosen.
22.4.2. Malicious driver detection (MDD)
It’s not appropriate to send a packet, if this packet’s destination MAC address is just this port’s MAC address. If SW tries to send such packets, HW will report a MDD event and drop the packets.
The APPs based on DPDK should avoid providing such packets.
22.5. Sample Application Notes
22.5.1. Vlan filter
Vlan filter only works when Promiscuous mode is off.
To start testpmd
, and add vlan 10 to port 0:
./app/testpmd -l 0-15 -n 4 -- -i
...
testpmd> rx_vlan add 10 0
22.6. Limitations or Known issues
The Intel E810 requires a programmable pipeline package be downloaded by the driver to support normal operations. The E810 has a limited functionality built in to allow PXE boot and other use cases, but the driver must download a package file during the driver initialization stage. The file must be in the /lib/firmware/intel/ice/ddp directory and it must be named ice.pkg. A symbolic link to this file is also ok. The same package file is used by both the kernel driver and the DPDK PMD.
22.6.1. 19.02 limitation
Ice code released in 19.02 is for evaluation only.