32. IONIC Driver

The ionic driver provides support for AMD Pensando server adapters. It currently supports the below models:

  • DSC-25 dual-port 25G Distributed Services Card (pdf)
  • DSC-100 dual-port 100G Distributed Services Card (pdf)
  • DSC-200 dual-port 200G Distributed Services Card (pdf)

Please visit the AMD Pensando web site at https://www.amd.com/en/accelerators/pensando for more information.

32.1. Identifying the Adapter

To determine if one or more AMD Pensando DSC Ethernet devices are installed on the host, check for the PCI devices:

lspci -d 1dd8:
b5:00.0 Ethernet controller: Device 1dd8:1002
b6:00.0 Ethernet controller: Device 1dd8:1002

32.2. Firmware Support

The ionic PMD requires firmware which supports 16 segment transmit SGLs. This support was added prior to version 1.0. For help upgrading older versions, please contact AMD Pensando support.

32.3. Runtime Configuration

  • Queue in CMB support (default 0)

    Queue memory can be allocated from the Controller Memory Buffer (CMB) using the ionic_cmb devargs parameter.

    For example:

    -a 0000:b5:00.0,ionic_cmb=1

32.4. Building DPDK

The ionic PMD supports UIO and VFIO. Please refer to the DPDK documentation that comes with the DPDK suite for instructions on how to build DPDK.