17. DPDK Release 17.11

17.1. New Features

Extended port_id range from uint8_t to uint16_t.

Increased the port_id range from 8 bits to 16 bits in order to support more than 256 ports in DPDK. All ethdev APIs which have port_id as parameter have been changed.
Modified the return type of rte_eth_stats_reset.

Changed return type of rte_eth_stats_reset from void to int so that the caller can determine whether a device supports the operation or not and if the operation was carried out.
Added a new driver for Marvell Armada 7k/8k devices.

Added the new mrvl net driver for Marvell Armada 7k/8k devices. See the MVPP2 Poll Mode Driver NIC guide for more details on this new driver.
Updated mlx4 driver.

Updated the mlx4 driver including the following changes:
- Isolated mode (rte_flow) can now be enabled anytime, not only during initial device configuration.
- Flow rules now support up to 4096 priority levels usable at will by applications.
- Enhanced error message to help debugging invalid/unsupported flow rules.
- Flow rules matching all multicast and promiscuous traffic are now allowed.
- No more software restrictions on flow rules with the RSS action, their configuration is much more flexible.
- Significantly reduced memory footprint for Rx and Tx queue objects.
- While supported, UDP RSS is temporarily disabled due to a remaining issue with its support in the Linux kernel.
- The new RSS implementation does not automatically spread traffic according to the inner packet of VXLAN frames anymore, only the outer one (like other PMDs).
- Partial (Tx only) support for secondary processes was broken and had to be removed.
- Refactored driver to get rid of dependency on the components provided by Mellanox OFED and instead rely on the current and public rdma-core package and Linux version from now on.
- Removed compile-time limitation on number of device instances the PMD can support.
Updated mlx5 driver.

Updated the mlx5 driver including the following changes:
- Enabled the PMD to run on top of upstream Linux kernel and rdma-core libs, removing the dependency on specific Mellanox OFED libraries.
- Improved PMD latency performance.
- Improved PMD memory footprint.
- Added support for vectorized Rx/Tx burst for ARMv8.
- Added support for secondary process.
- Added support for flow counters.
- Added support for Rx hardware timestamp offload.
- Added support for device removal event.
Added SoftNIC PMD.

Added a new SoftNIC PMD. This virtual device provides applications with software fallback support for traffic management.
Added support for NXP DPAA Devices.

Added support for NXP’s DPAA devices - LS104x series. This includes:
- DPAA Bus driver
- DPAA Mempool driver for supporting offloaded packet memory pool
- DPAA PMD for DPAA devices
See the DPAA Poll Mode Driver document for more details of this new driver.
Updated support for Cavium OCTEONTX Device.

Updated support for Cavium’s OCTEONTX device (CN83xx). This includes:
- OCTEONTX Mempool driver for supporting offloaded packet memory pool
- OCTEONTX Ethdev PMD
- OCTEONTX Eventdev-Ethdev Rx adapter
See the OCTEON TX Poll Mode driver document for more details of this new driver.
Added PF support to the Netronome NFP PMD.

Added PF support to the Netronome NFP PMD. Previously the NFP PMD only supported VFs. PF support is just as a basic DPDK port and has no VF management yet.

PF support comes with firmware upload support which allows the PMD to independently work from kernel netdev NFP drivers.

NFP 4000 devices are also now supported along with previous 6000 devices.
Updated bnxt PMD.

Major enhancements include:
- Support for Flow API
- Support for Tx and Rx descriptor status functions
Added bus agnostic functions to cryptodev for PMD initialization

Added new PMD assist, bus independent, functions rte_cryptodev_pmd_parse_input_args(), rte_cryptodev_pmd_create() and rte_cryptodev_pmd_destroy() for drivers to manage creation and destruction of new device instances.
Updated QAT crypto PMD.

Added several performance enhancements:
- Removed atomics from the internal queue pair structure.
- Added coalesce writes to HEAD CSR on response processing.
- Added coalesce writes to TAIL CSR on request processing.
In addition support was added for the AES CCM algorithm.
Updated the AESNI MB PMD.

The AESNI MB PMD has been updated with additional support for:
- The DES CBC algorithm.
- The DES DOCSIS BPI algorithm.
This change requires version 0.47 of the IPsec Multi-buffer library. For more details see the AESN-NI Multi Buffer Crypto Poll Mode Driver documentation.
Updated the OpenSSL PMD.

The OpenSSL PMD has been updated with additional support for:
- The DES CBC algorithm.
- The AES CCM algorithm.
Added NXP DPAA SEC crypto PMD.

A new dpaa_sec hardware based crypto PMD for NXP DPAA devices has been added. See the NXP DPAA CAAM (DPAA_SEC) document for more details.
Added MRVL crypto PMD.

A new crypto PMD has been added, which provides several ciphering and hashing algorithms. All cryptography operations use the MUSDK library crypto API. See the MVSAM Crypto Poll Mode Driver document for more details.
Add new benchmarking mode to dpdk-test-crypto-perf application.

Added a new “PMD cyclecount” benchmark mode to the dpdk-test-crypto-perf application to display a detailed breakdown of CPU cycles used by hardware acceleration.
Added the Security Offload Library.

Added an experimental library - rte_security. This provide security APIs for protocols like IPsec using inline ipsec offload to ethernet devices or full protocol offload with lookaside crypto devices.

See the Security Library section of the DPDK Programmers Guide document for more information.
Updated the DPAA2_SEC crypto driver to support rte_security.

Updated the dpaa2_sec crypto PMD to support rte_security lookaside protocol offload for IPsec.
Updated the IXGBE ethernet driver to support rte_security.

Updated ixgbe ethernet PMD to support rte_security inline IPsec offload.
Updated i40e driver to support GTP-C/GTP-U.

Updated i40e PMD to support GTP-C/GTP-U with GTP-C/GTP-U supporting profiles which can be programmed by dynamic device personalization (DDP) process.
Added the i40e ethernet driver to support queue region feature.

This feature enable queue regions configuration for RSS in PF, so that different traffic classes or different packet classification types can be separated into different queues in different queue regions.
Updated ipsec-secgw application to support rte_security.

Updated the ipsec-secgw sample application to support rte_security actions for ipsec inline and full protocol offload using lookaside crypto offload.
Added IOMMU support to libvhost-user

Implemented device IOTLB in the Vhost-user backend, and enabled Virtio’s IOMMU feature. The feature is disabled by default, and can be enabled by setting RTE_VHOST_USER_IOMMU_SUPPORT flag at vhost device registration time.
Added the Event Ethernet Adapter Library.

Added the Event Ethernet Adapter library. This library provides APIs for eventdev applications to configure the ethdev for eventdev packet flow.
Updated DPAA2 Event PMD for the Event Ethernet Adapter.

Added support for the eventdev ethernet adapter for DPAA2.
Added Membership library (rte_member).

Added a new data structure library called the Membership Library.

The Membership Library is an extension and generalization of a traditional filter (for example Bloom Filter) structure that has multiple usages in a wide variety of workloads and applications. In general, the Membership Library is a data structure that provides a “set-summary” and responds to set-membership queries whether a certain member belongs to a set(s).

The library provides APIs for DPDK applications to insert a new member, delete an existing member, and query the existence of a member in a given set, or a group of sets. For the case of a group of sets the library will return not only whether the element has been inserted in one of the sets but also which set it belongs to.

See the Membership Library documentation in the Programmers Guide, for more information.
Added the Generic Segmentation Offload Library.

Added the Generic Segmentation Offload (GSO) library to enable applications to split large packets (e.g. MTU is 64KB) into small ones (e.g. MTU is 1500B). Supported packet types are:
- TCP/IPv4 packets.
- VxLAN packets, which must have an outer IPv4 header, and contain an inner TCP/IPv4 packet.
- GRE packets, which must contain an outer IPv4 header, and inner TCP/IPv4 headers.
The GSO library doesn’t check if the input packets have correct checksums, and doesn’t update checksums for output packets. Additionally, the GSO library doesn’t process IP fragmented packets.
Added the Flow Classification Library.

Added an experimental Flow Classification library to provide APIs for DPDK applications to classify an input packet by matching it against a set of flow rules. It uses the librte_table API to manage the flow rules.

17.2. Resolved Issues

Service core fails to call service callback due to atomic lock

In a specific configuration of multi-thread unsafe services and service cores, a service core previously did not correctly release the atomic lock on the service. This would result in the cores polling the service, but it looked like another thread was executing the service callback. The logic for atomic locking of the services has been fixed and refactored for readability.

17.3. API Changes

Ethdev device name length increased.

The size of internal device name has been increased to 64 characters to allow for storing longer bus specific names.
Removed the Ethdev RTE_ETH_DEV_DETACHABLE flag.

Removed the Ethdev RTE_ETH_DEV_DETACHABLE flag. This flag is not required anymore, with the new hotplug implementation. It has been removed from the ether library. Its semantics are now expressed at the bus and PMD level.
Service cores API updated for usability

The service cores API has been changed, removing pointers from the API where possible, and instead using integer IDs to identify each service. This simplifies application code, aids debugging, and provides better encapsulation. A summary of the main changes made is as follows:
- Services identified by ID not by rte_service_spec pointer
- Reduced API surface by using set functions instead of enable/disable
- Reworked rte_service_register to provide the service ID to registrar
- Reworked start and stop APIs into rte_service_runstate_set
- Added API to set runstate of service implementation to indicate readiness
The following changes have been made in the mempool library
- Moved flags datatype from int to unsigned int for rte_mempool.
- Removed __rte_unused int flag param from rte_mempool_generic_put and rte_mempool_generic_get API.
- Added flags param in rte_mempool_xmem_size and rte_mempool_xmem_usage.
- rte_mem_phy2mch was used in Xen dom0 to obtain the physical address; remove this API as Xen dom0 support was removed.
Added IOVA aliases related to physical address handling.

Some data types, structure members and functions related to physical address handling are deprecated and have new aliases with IOVA wording. For example:
- phys_addr_t can be often replaced by rte_iova_t of same size.
- RTE_BAD_PHYS_ADDR is often replaced by RTE_BAD_IOVA of same value.
- rte_memseg.phys_addr is aliased with rte_memseg.iova_addr.
- rte_mem_virt2phy() can often be replaced by rte_mem_virt2iova.
- rte_malloc_virt2phy is aliased with rte_malloc_virt2iova.
- rte_memzone.phys_addr is aliased with rte_memzone.iova.
- rte_mempool_objhdr.physaddr is aliased with rte_mempool_objhdr.iova.
- rte_mempool_memhdr.phys_addr is aliased with rte_mempool_memhdr.iova.
- rte_mempool_virt2phy() can be replaced by rte_mempool_virt2iova().
- rte_mempool_populate_phys*() are aliased with rte_mempool_populate_iova*()
- rte_mbuf.buf_physaddr is aliased with rte_mbuf.buf_iova.
- rte_mbuf_data_dma_addr*() are aliased with rte_mbuf_data_iova*().
- rte_pktmbuf_mtophys* are aliased with rte_pktmbuf_iova*().
PCI bus API moved outside of the EAL

The PCI bus previously implemented within the EAL has been moved. A first part has been added as an RTE library providing PCI helpers to parse device locations or other such utilities. A second part consisting of the actual bus driver has been moved to its proper subdirectory, without changing its functionalities.

As such, several PCI-related functions are not exposed by the EAL anymore:
- rte_pci_detach
- rte_pci_dump
- rte_pci_ioport_map
- rte_pci_ioport_read
- rte_pci_ioport_unmap
- rte_pci_ioport_write
- rte_pci_map_device
- rte_pci_probe
- rte_pci_probe_one
- rte_pci_read_config
- rte_pci_register
- rte_pci_scan
- rte_pci_unmap_device
- rte_pci_unregister
- rte_pci_write_config
These functions are made available either as part of librte_pci or librte_bus_pci.
Moved vdev bus APIs outside of the EAL

Moved the following APIs from librte_eal to librte_bus_vdev:
- rte_vdev_init
- rte_vdev_register
- rte_vdev_uninit
- rte_vdev_unregister
Add return value to stats_get dev op API

The stats_get dev op API return value has been changed to be int. In this way PMDs can return an error value in case of failure at stats getting process time.
Modified the rte_cryptodev_allocate_driver function.

Modified the rte_cryptodev_allocate_driver() function in the cryptodev library. An extra parameter struct cryptodev_driver *crypto_drv has been added.
Removed virtual device bus specific functions from librte_cryptodev.

The functions rte_cryptodev_vdev_parse_init_params() and rte_cryptodev_vdev_pmd_init() have been removed from librte_cryptodev and have been replaced by non bus specific functions rte_cryptodev_pmd_parse_input_args() and rte_cryptodev_pmd_create().

The rte_cryptodev_create_vdev() function was removed to avoid the dependency on vdev in librte_cryptodev; instead, users can call rte_vdev_init() directly.
Removed PCI device bus specific functions from librte_cryptodev.

The functions rte_cryptodev_pci_generic_probe() and rte_cryptodev_pci_generic_remove() have been removed from librte_cryptodev and have been replaced by non bus specific functions rte_cryptodev_pmd_create() and rte_cryptodev_pmd_destroy().
Removed deprecated functions to manage log level or type.

The functions rte_set_log_level(), rte_get_log_level(), rte_set_log_type() and rte_get_log_type() have been removed.

They are respectively replaced by rte_log_set_global_level(), rte_log_get_global_level(), rte_log_set_level() and rte_log_get_level().
Removed mbuf flags PKT_RX_VLAN_PKT and PKT_RX_QINQ_PKT.

The mbuf flags PKT_RX_VLAN_PKT and PKT_RX_QINQ_PKT have been removed since their behavior was not properly described.
Added mbuf flags PKT_RX_VLAN and PKT_RX_QINQ.

Two mbuf flags have been added to indicate that the VLAN identifier has been saved in the mbuf structure. For instance:
- If VLAN is not stripped and TCI is saved: PKT_RX_VLAN
- If VLAN is stripped and TCI is saved: PKT_RX_VLAN | PKT_RX_VLAN_STRIPPED
Modified the vlan_offload_set_t function prototype in the ethdev library.

Modified the vlan_offload_set_t function prototype in the ethdev library. The return value has been changed from void to int so the caller can determine whether the backing device supports the operation or if the operation was successfully performed.

17.4. ABI Changes

Extended port_id range.

The size of the field port_id in the rte_eth_dev_data structure has changed, as described in the New Features section above.
New parameter added to rte_eth_dev.

A new parameter security_ctx has been added to rte_eth_dev to support security operations like IPsec inline.
New parameter added to rte_cryptodev.

A new parameter security_ctx has been added to rte_cryptodev to support security operations like lookaside crypto.

17.5. Removed Items

Xen dom0 in EAL has been removed, as well as the xenvirt PMD and vhost_xen.
The crypto performance unit tests have been removed, replaced by the dpdk-test-crypto-perf application.

17.6. Shared Library Versions

The libraries prepended with a plus sign were incremented in this version.

  librte_acl.so.2
+ librte_bitratestats.so.2
+ librte_bus_dpaa.so.1
+ librte_bus_fslmc.so.1
+ librte_bus_pci.so.1
+ librte_bus_vdev.so.1
  librte_cfgfile.so.2
  librte_cmdline.so.2
+ librte_cryptodev.so.4
  librte_distributor.so.1
+ librte_eal.so.6
+ librte_ethdev.so.8
+ librte_eventdev.so.3
+ librte_flow_classify.so.1
  librte_gro.so.1
+ librte_gso.so.1
  librte_hash.so.2
  librte_ip_frag.so.1
  librte_jobstats.so.1
  librte_kni.so.2
  librte_kvargs.so.1
  librte_latencystats.so.1
  librte_lpm.so.2
  librte_mbuf.so.3
+ librte_mempool.so.3
  librte_meter.so.1
  librte_metrics.so.1
  librte_net.so.1
+ librte_pci.so.1
+ librte_pdump.so.2
  librte_pipeline.so.3
+ librte_pmd_bnxt.so.2
+ librte_pmd_bond.so.2
+ librte_pmd_i40e.so.2
+ librte_pmd_ixgbe.so.2
  librte_pmd_ring.so.2
+ librte_pmd_softnic.so.1
+ librte_pmd_vhost.so.2
  librte_port.so.3
  librte_power.so.1
  librte_reorder.so.1
  librte_ring.so.1
  librte_sched.so.1
+ librte_security.so.1
+ librte_table.so.3
  librte_timer.so.1
  librte_vhost.so.3

17.7. Tested Platforms

Intel(R) platforms with Intel(R) NICs combinations
- CPU
  - Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU C2758 @ 2.40GHz
  - Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU D-1540 @ 2.00GHz
  - Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU D-1541 @ 2.10GHz
  - Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-4667 v3 @ 2.00GHz
  - Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2680 v2 @ 2.80GHz
  - Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2699 v3 @ 2.30GHz
  - Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2695 v4 @ 2.10GHz
  - Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2658 v2 @ 2.40GHz
  - Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2658 v3 @ 2.20GHz
- OS:
  - CentOS 7.2
  - Fedora 25
  - Fedora 26
  - FreeBSD 11
  - Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 7.3
  - SUSE Enterprise Linux 12
  - Wind River Linux 8
  - Ubuntu 16.04
  - Ubuntu 16.10
- NICs:
  - Intel(R) 82599ES 10 Gigabit Ethernet Controller
    
    Firmware version: 0x61bf0001
    
    Device id (pf/vf): 8086:10fb / 8086:10ed
    
    Driver version: 5.2.3 (ixgbe)
  - Intel(R) Corporation Ethernet Connection X552/X557-AT 10GBASE-T
    
    Firmware version: 0x800003e7
    
    Device id (pf/vf): 8086:15ad / 8086:15a8
    
    Driver version: 4.4.6 (ixgbe)
  - Intel(R) Ethernet Converged Network Adapter X710-DA4 (4x10G)
    
    Firmware version: 6.01 0x80003205
    
    Device id (pf/vf): 8086:1572 / 8086:154c
    
    Driver version: 2.1.26 (i40e)
  - Intel(R) Ethernet Converged Network Adapter X710-DA2 (2x10G)
    
    Firmware version: 6.01 0x80003204
    
    Device id (pf/vf): 8086:1572 / 8086:154c
    
    Driver version: 2.1.26 (i40e)
  - Intel(R) Ethernet Converged Network Adapter XXV710-DA2 (2x25G)
    
    Firmware version: 6.01 0x80003221
    
    Device id (pf/vf): 8086:158b
    
    Driver version: 2.1.26 (i40e)
  - Intel(R) Ethernet Converged Network Adapter XL710-QDA2 (2X40G)
    
    Firmware version: 6.01 0x8000321c
    
    Device id (pf/vf): 8086:1583 / 8086:154c
    
    Driver version: 2.1.26 (i40e)
  - Intel(R) Corporation I350 Gigabit Network Connection
    
    Firmware version: 1.63, 0x80000dda
    
    Device id (pf/vf): 8086:1521 / 8086:1520
    
    Driver version: 5.3.0-k (igb)
Intel(R) platforms with Mellanox(R) NICs combinations
- Platform details:
  - Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2697A v4 @ 2.60GHz
  - Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2697 v3 @ 2.60GHz
  - Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2680 v2 @ 2.80GHz
  - Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2650 v4 @ 2.20GHz
  - Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2640 @ 2.50GHz
  - Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2620 v4 @ 2.10GHz
- OS:
  - Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 7.3 (Maipo)
  - Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 7.2 (Maipo)
  - Ubuntu 16.10
  - Ubuntu 16.04
  - Ubuntu 14.04
- MLNX_OFED: 4.2-1.0.0.0
- NICs:
  - Mellanox(R) ConnectX(R)-3 Pro 40G MCX354A-FCC_Ax (2x40G)
    
    Host interface: PCI Express 3.0 x8
    
    Device ID: 15b3:1007
    
    Firmware version: 2.42.5000
  - Mellanox(R) ConnectX(R)-4 10G MCX4111A-XCAT (1x10G)
    
    Host interface: PCI Express 3.0 x8
    
    Device ID: 15b3:1013
    
    Firmware version: 12.21.1000
  - Mellanox(R) ConnectX(R)-4 10G MCX4121A-XCAT (2x10G)
    
    Host interface: PCI Express 3.0 x8
    
    Device ID: 15b3:1013
    
    Firmware version: 12.21.1000
  - Mellanox(R) ConnectX(R)-4 25G MCX4111A-ACAT (1x25G)
    
    Host interface: PCI Express 3.0 x8
    
    Device ID: 15b3:1013
    
    Firmware version: 12.21.1000
  - Mellanox(R) ConnectX(R)-4 25G MCX4121A-ACAT (2x25G)
    
    Host interface: PCI Express 3.0 x8
    
    Device ID: 15b3:1013
    
    Firmware version: 12.21.1000
  - Mellanox(R) ConnectX(R)-4 40G MCX4131A-BCAT/MCX413A-BCAT (1x40G)
    
    Host interface: PCI Express 3.0 x8
    
    Device ID: 15b3:1013
    
    Firmware version: 12.21.1000
  - Mellanox(R) ConnectX(R)-4 40G MCX415A-BCAT (1x40G)
    
    Host interface: PCI Express 3.0 x16
    
    Device ID: 15b3:1013
    
    Firmware version: 12.21.1000
  - Mellanox(R) ConnectX(R)-4 50G MCX4131A-GCAT/MCX413A-GCAT (1x50G)
    
    Host interface: PCI Express 3.0 x8
    
    Device ID: 15b3:1013
    
    Firmware version: 12.21.1000
  - Mellanox(R) ConnectX(R)-4 50G MCX414A-BCAT (2x50G)
    
    Host interface: PCI Express 3.0 x8
    
    Device ID: 15b3:1013
    
    Firmware version: 12.21.1000
  - Mellanox(R) ConnectX(R)-4 50G MCX415A-GCAT/MCX416A-BCAT/MCX416A-GCAT (2x50G)
    
    Host interface: PCI Express 3.0 x16
    
    Device ID: 15b3:1013
    
    Firmware version: 12.21.1000
  - Mellanox(R) ConnectX(R)-4 50G MCX415A-CCAT (1x100G)
    
    Host interface: PCI Express 3.0 x16
    
    Device ID: 15b3:1013
    
    Firmware version: 12.21.1000
  - Mellanox(R) ConnectX(R)-4 100G MCX416A-CCAT (2x100G)
    
    Host interface: PCI Express 3.0 x16
    
    Device ID: 15b3:1013
    
    Firmware version: 12.21.1000
  - Mellanox(R) ConnectX(R)-4 Lx 10G MCX4121A-XCAT (2x10G)
    
    Host interface: PCI Express 3.0 x8
    
    Device ID: 15b3:1015
    
    Firmware version: 14.21.1000
  - Mellanox(R) ConnectX(R)-4 Lx 25G MCX4121A-ACAT (2x25G)
    
    Host interface: PCI Express 3.0 x8
    
    Device ID: 15b3:1015
    
    Firmware version: 14.21.1000
  - Mellanox(R) ConnectX(R)-5 100G MCX556A-ECAT (2x100G)
    
    Host interface: PCI Express 3.0 x16
    
    Device ID: 15b3:1017
    
    Firmware version: 16.21.1000
  - Mellanox(R) ConnectX-5 Ex EN 100G MCX516A-CDAT (2x100G)
    
    Host interface: PCI Express 4.0 x16
    
    Device ID: 15b3:1019
    
    Firmware version: 16.21.1000
ARM platforms with Mellanox(R) NICs combinations
- Platform details:
  - Qualcomm ARM 1.1 2500MHz
- OS:
  - Ubuntu 16.04
- MLNX_OFED: 4.2-1.0.0.0
- NICs:
  - Mellanox(R) ConnectX(R)-4 Lx 25G MCX4121A-ACAT (2x25G)
    
    Host interface: PCI Express 3.0 x8
    
    Device ID: 15b3:1015
    
    Firmware version: 14.21.1000
  - Mellanox(R) ConnectX(R)-5 100G MCX556A-ECAT (2x100G)
    
    Host interface: PCI Express 3.0 x16
    
    Device ID: 15b3:1017
    
    Firmware version: 16.21.1000