Network Interface Controller Drivers

April 03, 2015

Contents

• 1. Driver for VM Emulated Devices
  • 1.1. Validated Hypervisors
  • 1.2. Recommended Guest Operating System in Virtual Machine
  • 1.3. Setting Up a KVM Virtual Machine
  • 1.4. Known Limitations of Emulated Devices
• 2. IXGBE Driver
  • 2.1. Vector PMD for IXGBE
    • 2.1.1. RX Constraints
    • 2.1.2. TX Constraint
    • 2.1.3. Sample Application Notes
• 3. I40E/IXGBE/IGB Virtual Function Driver
  • 3.1. SR-IOV Mode Utilization in a DPDK Environment
    • 3.1.1. Physical and Virtual Function Infrastructure
    • 3.1.2. Validated Hypervisors
    • 3.1.3. Expected Guest Operating System in Virtual Machine
  • 3.2. Setting Up a KVM Virtual Machine Monitor
  • 3.3. DPDK SR-IOV PMD PF/VF Driver Usage Model
    • 3.3.1. Fast Host-based Packet Processing
  • 3.4. SR-IOV (PF/VF) Approach for Inter-VM Communication
• 4. MLX4 poll mode driver library
  • 4.1. Implementation details
  • 4.2. Features and limitations
  • 4.3. Configuration
    • 4.3.1. Compilation options
    • 4.3.2. Environment variables
    • 4.3.3. Run-time configuration
    • 4.3.4. Kernel module parameters
  • 4.4. Prerequisites
    • 4.4.1. Getting Mellanox OFED
    • 4.4.2. Getting libibverbs and libmlx4 from DPDK.org
  • 4.5. Usage example
• 5. Poll Mode Driver for Emulated Virtio NIC
  • 5.1. Virtio Implementation in DPDK
  • 5.2. Features and Limitations of virtio PMD
  • 5.3. Prerequisites
  • 5.4. Virtio with kni vhost Back End
  • 5.5. Virtio with qemu virtio Back End
• 6. Poll Mode Driver for Paravirtual VMXNET3 NIC
  • 6.1. VMXNET3 Implementation in the DPDK
  • 6.2. Features and Limitations of VMXNET3 PMD
  • 6.3. Prerequisites
  • 6.4. VMXNET3 with a Native NIC Connected to a vSwitch
  • 6.5. VMXNET3 Chaining VMs Connected to a vSwitch
• 7. Libpcap and Ring Based Poll Mode Drivers
  • 7.1. Using the Drivers from the EAL Command Line
    • 7.1.1. Libpcap-based PMD
    • 7.1.2. Rings-based PMD
    • 7.1.3. Using the Poll Mode Driver from an Application

Figures

Figure 1. Virtualization for a Single Port NIC in SR-IOV Mode

Figure 2. SR-IOV Performance Benchmark Setup

Figure 3. Fast Host-based Packet Processing

Figure 4. SR-IOV Inter-VM Communication

Figure 5. Virtio Host2VM Communication Example Using KNI vhost Back End

Figure 6. Virtio Host2VM Communication Example Using Qemu vhost Back End