1 .. SPDX-License-Identifier: BSD-3-Clause
2 Copyright(c) 2010-2014 Intel Corporation.
7 This chapter describes the packages required to compile the DPDK.
11 If the DPDK is being used on an Intel® Communications Chipset 89xx Series platform,
12 please consult the *Intel® Communications Chipset 89xx Series Software for Linux Getting Started Guide*.
14 BIOS Setting Prerequisite on x86
15 --------------------------------
17 For the majority of platforms, no special BIOS settings are needed to use basic DPDK functionality.
18 However, for additional HPET timer and power management functionality,
19 and high performance of small packets, BIOS setting changes may be needed.
20 Consult the section on :ref:`Enabling Additional Functionality <Enabling_Additional_Functionality>`
21 for more information on the required changes.
25 If UEFI secure boot is enabled, the Linux kernel may disallow the use of
26 UIO on the system. Therefore, devices for use by DPDK should be bound to the
27 ``vfio-pci`` kernel module rather than ``igb_uio`` or ``uio_pci_generic``.
28 For more details see :ref:`linux_gsg_binding_kernel`.
30 Compilation of the DPDK
31 -----------------------
33 **Required Tools and Libraries:**
37 The setup commands and installed packages needed on various systems may be different.
38 For details on Linux distributions and the versions tested, please consult the DPDK Release Notes.
40 * General development tools including a supported C compiler such as gcc (version 4.9+) or clang (version 3.4+).
42 * For RHEL/Fedora systems these can be installed using ``dnf groupinstall "Development Tools"``
44 * For Ubuntu/Debian systems these can be installed using ``apt install build-essential``
46 * Python, recommended version 3.5+.
48 * Python v3.5+ is needed to build DPDK using meson and ninja
50 * Python 2.7+ or 3.2+, to use various helper scripts included in the DPDK package.
52 * Meson (version 0.47.1+) and ninja
54 * ``meson`` & ``ninja-build`` packages in most Linux distributions
56 * If the packaged version is below the minimum version, the latest versions
57 can be installed from Python's "pip" repository: ``pip3 install meson ninja``
59 * Library for handling NUMA (Non Uniform Memory Access).
61 * ``numactl-devel`` in RHEL/Fedora;
63 * ``libnuma-dev`` in Debian/Ubuntu;
65 * Linux kernel headers or sources required to build kernel modules.
69 Please ensure that the latest patches are applied to third party libraries
70 and software to avoid any known vulnerabilities.
75 * Intel® C++ Compiler (icc). For installation, additional libraries may be required.
76 See the icc Installation Guide found in the Documentation directory under the compiler installation.
78 * IBM® Advance ToolChain for Powerlinux. This is a set of open source development tools and runtime libraries
79 which allows users to take leading edge advantage of IBM's latest POWER hardware features on Linux. To install
80 it, see the IBM official installation document.
82 **Additional Libraries**
84 A number of DPDK components, such as libraries and poll-mode drivers (PMDs) have additional dependencies.
85 For DPDK builds, the presence or absence of these dependencies will be automatically detected
86 enabling or disabling the relevant components appropriately.
88 In each case, the relevant library development package (``-devel`` or ``-dev``) is needed to build the DPDK components.
90 For libraries the additional dependencies include:
92 * libarchive: for some unit tests using tar to get their resources.
94 * libelf: to compile and use the bpf library.
96 For poll-mode drivers, the additional dependencies for each driver can be
97 found in that driver's documentation in the relevant DPDK guide document,
98 e.g. :doc:`../nics/index`
101 Running DPDK Applications
102 -------------------------
104 To run an DPDK application, some customization may be required on the target machine.
111 * Kernel version >= 3.16
113 The kernel version required is based on the oldest long term stable kernel available
114 at kernel.org when the DPDK version is in development.
115 Compatibility for recent distribution kernels will be kept, notably RHEL/CentOS 7.
117 The kernel version in use can be checked using the command::
121 * glibc >= 2.7 (for features related to cpuset)
123 The version can be checked using the ``ldd --version`` command.
125 * Kernel configuration
127 In the Fedora OS and other common distributions, such as Ubuntu, or Red Hat Enterprise Linux,
128 the vendor supplied kernel configurations can be used to run most DPDK applications.
130 For other kernel builds, options which should be enabled for DPDK include:
134 * PROC_PAGE_MONITOR support
136 * HPET and HPET_MMAP configuration options should also be enabled if HPET support is required.
137 See the section on :ref:`High Precision Event Timer (HPET) Functionality <High_Precision_Event_Timer>` for more details.
139 .. _linux_gsg_hugepages:
141 Use of Hugepages in the Linux Environment
142 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
144 Hugepage support is required for the large memory pool allocation used for packet buffers
145 (the HUGETLBFS option must be enabled in the running kernel as indicated the previous section).
146 By using hugepage allocations, performance is increased since fewer pages are needed,
147 and therefore less Translation Lookaside Buffers (TLBs, high speed translation caches),
148 which reduce the time it takes to translate a virtual page address to a physical page address.
149 Without hugepages, high TLB miss rates would occur with the standard 4k page size, slowing performance.
151 Reserving Hugepages for DPDK Use
152 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
154 The allocation of hugepages should be done at boot time or as soon as possible after system boot
155 to prevent memory from being fragmented in physical memory.
156 To reserve hugepages at boot time, a parameter is passed to the Linux kernel on the kernel command line.
158 For 2 MB pages, just pass the hugepages option to the kernel. For example, to reserve 1024 pages of 2 MB, use::
162 For other hugepage sizes, for example 1G pages, the size must be specified explicitly and
163 can also be optionally set as the default hugepage size for the system.
164 For example, to reserve 4G of hugepage memory in the form of four 1G pages, the following options should be passed to the kernel::
166 default_hugepagesz=1G hugepagesz=1G hugepages=4
170 The hugepage sizes that a CPU supports can be determined from the CPU flags on Intel architecture.
171 If pse exists, 2M hugepages are supported; if pdpe1gb exists, 1G hugepages are supported.
172 On IBM Power architecture, the supported hugepage sizes are 16MB and 16GB.
176 For 64-bit applications, it is recommended to use 1 GB hugepages if the platform supports them.
178 In the case of a dual-socket NUMA system,
179 the number of hugepages reserved at boot time is generally divided equally between the two sockets
180 (on the assumption that sufficient memory is present on both sockets).
182 See the Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt file in your Linux source tree for further details of these and other kernel options.
186 For 2 MB pages, there is also the option of allocating hugepages after the system has booted.
187 This is done by echoing the number of hugepages required to a nr_hugepages file in the ``/sys/devices/`` directory.
188 For a single-node system, the command to use is as follows (assuming that 1024 pages are required)::
190 echo 1024 > /sys/kernel/mm/hugepages/hugepages-2048kB/nr_hugepages
192 On a NUMA machine, pages should be allocated explicitly on separate nodes::
194 echo 1024 > /sys/devices/system/node/node0/hugepages/hugepages-2048kB/nr_hugepages
195 echo 1024 > /sys/devices/system/node/node1/hugepages/hugepages-2048kB/nr_hugepages
199 For 1G pages, it is not possible to reserve the hugepage memory after the system has booted.
201 Using Hugepages with the DPDK
202 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
204 Once the hugepage memory is reserved, to make the memory available for DPDK use, perform the following steps::
207 mount -t hugetlbfs nodev /mnt/huge
209 The mount point can be made permanent across reboots, by adding the following line to the ``/etc/fstab`` file::
211 nodev /mnt/huge hugetlbfs defaults 0 0
213 For 1GB pages, the page size must be specified as a mount option::
215 nodev /mnt/huge_1GB hugetlbfs pagesize=1GB 0 0