========================================
The SFC EFX PMD (**librte_pmd_sfc_efx**) provides poll mode driver support
-for **Solarflare SFN7xxx and SFN8xxx** family of 10/40 Gbps adapters.
+for **Solarflare SFN7xxx and SFN8xxx** family of 10/40 Gbps adapters and
+**Solarflare XtremeScale X2xxx** family of 10/25/40/50/100 Gbps adapters.
SFC EFX PMD has support for the latest Linux and FreeBSD operating systems.
More information can be found at `Solarflare Communications website
- Multiple transmit and receive queues
-- Link state information
+- Link state information including link status change interrupt
- IPv4/IPv6 TCP/UDP transmit checksum offload
+- Inner IPv4/IPv6 TCP/UDP transmit checksum offload
+
+- Port hardware statistics
+
+- Extended statistics (see Solarflare Server Adapter User's Guide for
+ the statistics description)
+
+- Basic flow control
+
+- MTU update
+
+- Jumbo frames up to 9K
+
+- Promiscuous mode
+
+- Allmulticast mode
+
+- TCP segmentation offload (TSO)
+
+- Multicast MAC filter
+
+- IPv4/IPv6 TCP/UDP receive checksum offload
+
+- Inner IPv4/IPv6 TCP/UDP receive checksum offload
+
+- Received packet type information
+
+- Receive side scaling (RSS)
+
+- RSS hash
+
+- Scattered Rx DMA for packet that are larger that a single Rx descriptor
+
+- Deferred receive and transmit queue start
+
+- Transmit VLAN insertion (if running firmware variant supports it)
+
+- Flow API
+
Non-supported Features
----------------------
The features not yet supported include:
-- Link status change interrupt
-
- Receive queue interupts
- Priority-based flow control
- VLAN stripping
-- Scattered receive
-
- LRO
It should be taken into account when mbuf pool for receive is created.
+Tunnels support
+---------------
+
+NVGRE, VXLAN and GENEVE tunnels are supported on SFN8xxx and X2xxx family
+adapters with full-feature firmware variant running.
+**sfboot** should be used to configure NIC to run full-feature firmware variant.
+See Solarflare Server Adapter User's Guide for details.
+
+SFN8xxx and X2xxx family adapters provide either inner or outer packet classes.
+If adapter firmware advertises support for tunnels then the PMD
+configures the hardware to report inner classes, and outer classes are
+not reported in received packets.
+However, for VXLAN and GENEVE tunnels the PMD does report UDP as the
+outer layer 4 packet type.
+
+SFN8xxx and X2xxx family adapters report GENEVE packets as VXLAN.
+If UDP ports are configured for only one tunnel type then it is safe to
+treat VXLAN packet type indication as the corresponding UDP tunnel type.
+
+
+Flow API support
+----------------
+
+Supported attributes:
+
+- Ingress
+
+Supported pattern items:
+
+- VOID
+
+- ETH (exact match of source/destination addresses, individual/group match
+ of destination address, EtherType in the outer frame and exact match of
+ destination addresses, individual/group match of destination address in
+ the inner frame)
+
+- VLAN (exact match of VID, double-tagging is supported)
+
+- IPV4 (exact match of source/destination addresses,
+ IP transport protocol)
+
+- IPV6 (exact match of source/destination addresses,
+ IP transport protocol)
+
+- TCP (exact match of source/destination ports)
+
+- UDP (exact match of source/destination ports)
+
+- VXLAN (exact match of VXLAN network identifier)
+
+- GENEVE (exact match of virtual network identifier, only Ethernet (0x6558)
+ protocol type is supported)
+
+- NVGRE (exact match of virtual subnet ID)
+
+Supported actions:
+
+- VOID
+
+- QUEUE
+
+- RSS
+
+- DROP
+
+Validating flow rules depends on the firmware variant.
+
+Ethernet destinaton individual/group match
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+Ethernet item supports I/G matching, if only the corresponding bit is set
+in the mask of destination address. If destinaton address in the spec is
+multicast, it matches all multicast (and broadcast) packets, oherwise it
+matches unicast packets that are not filtered by other flow rules.
+
+Exceptions to flow rules
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+There is a list of exceptional flow rule patterns which will not be
+accepted by the PMD. A pattern will be rejected if at least one of the
+conditions is met:
+
+- Filtering by IPv4 or IPv6 EtherType without pattern items of internet
+ layer and above.
+
+- The last item is IPV4 or IPV6, and it's empty.
+
+- Filtering by TCP or UDP IP transport protocol without pattern items of
+ transport layer and above.
+
+- The last item is TCP or UDP, and it's empty.
+
+
Supported NICs
--------------
+- Solarflare XtremeScale Adapters:
+
+ - Solarflare X2522 Dual Port SFP28 10/25GbE Adapter
+
- Solarflare Flareon [Ultra] Server Adapters:
- Solarflare SFN8522 Dual Port SFP+ Server Adapter
+ - Solarflare SFN8522M Dual Port SFP+ Server Adapter
+
+ - Solarflare SFN8042 Dual Port QSFP+ Server Adapter
+
- Solarflare SFN8542 Dual Port QSFP+ Server Adapter
+ - Solarflare SFN8722 Dual Port SFP+ OCP Server Adapter
+
- Solarflare SFN7002F Dual Port SFP+ Server Adapter
- Solarflare SFN7004F Quad Port SFP+ Server Adapter
Case-insensitive 1/y/yes/on or 0/n/no/off may be used to specify
boolean parameters value.
-- ``debug_init`` [bool] (default **n**)
-
- Enable extra logging during device intialization and startup.
-
-- ``mcdi_logging`` [bool] (default **n**)
-
- Enable extra logging of the communication with the NIC's management CPU.
- The logging is done using RTE_LOG() with INFO level and PMD type.
- The format is consumed by the Solarflare netlogdecode cross-platform tool.
+- ``rx_datapath`` [auto|efx|ef10] (default **auto**)
+
+ Choose receive datapath implementation.
+ **auto** allows the driver itself to make a choice based on firmware
+ features available and required by the datapath implementation.
+ **efx** chooses libefx-based datapath which supports Rx scatter.
+ **ef10** chooses EF10 (SFN7xxx, SFN8xxx, X2xxx) native datapath which is
+ more efficient than libefx-based and provides richer packet type
+ classification, but lacks Rx scatter support.
+
+- ``tx_datapath`` [auto|efx|ef10|ef10_simple] (default **auto**)
+
+ Choose transmit datapath implementation.
+ **auto** allows the driver itself to make a choice based on firmware
+ features available and required by the datapath implementation.
+ **efx** chooses libefx-based datapath which supports VLAN insertion
+ (full-feature firmware variant only), TSO and multi-segment mbufs.
+ Mbuf segments may come from different mempools, and mbuf reference
+ counters are treated responsibly.
+ **ef10** chooses EF10 (SFN7xxx, SFN8xxx, X2xxx) native datapath which is
+ more efficient than libefx-based but has no VLAN insertion and TSO
+ support yet.
+ Mbuf segments may come from different mempools, and mbuf reference
+ counters are treated responsibly.
+ **ef10_simple** chooses EF10 (SFN7xxx, SFN8xxx, X2xxx) native datapath which
+ is even more faster then **ef10** but does not support multi-segment
+ mbufs, disallows multiple mempools and neglects mbuf reference counters.
+
+- ``perf_profile`` [auto|throughput|low-latency] (default **throughput**)
+
+ Choose hardware tunning to be optimized for either throughput or
+ low-latency.
+ **auto** allows NIC firmware to make a choice based on
+ installed licences and firmware variant configured using **sfboot**.
+
+- ``stats_update_period_ms`` [long] (default **1000**)
+
+ Adjust period in milliseconds to update port hardware statistics.
+ The accepted range is 0 to 65535. The value of **0** may be used
+ to disable periodic statistics update. One should note that it's
+ only possible to set an arbitrary value on SFN8xxx and X2xxx provided that
+ firmware version is 6.2.1.1033 or higher, otherwise any positive
+ value will select a fixed update period of **1000** milliseconds
+
+- ``fw_variant`` [dont-care|full-feature|ultra-low-latency|
+ capture-packed-stream] (default **dont-care**)
+
+ Choose the preferred firmware variant to use. In order for the selected
+ option to have an effect, the **sfboot** utility must be configured with the
+ **auto** firmware-variant option. The preferred firmware variant applies to
+ all ports on the NIC.
+ **dont-care** ensures that the driver can attach to an unprivileged function.
+ The datapath firmware type to use is controlled by the **sfboot**
+ utility.
+ **full-feature** chooses full featured firmware.
+ **ultra-low-latency** chooses firmware with fewer features but lower latency.
+ **capture-packed-stream** chooses firmware for SolarCapture packed stream
+ mode.
+
+
+Dynamic Logging Parameters
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+One may leverage EAL option "--log-level" to change default levels
+for the log types supported by the driver. The option is used with
+an argument typically consisting of two parts separated by a comma.
+
+Level value is the last part which takes an integer greater than 0.
+Log type is the former part which may contain a regular expression.
+Depending on the choice of the expression, the given log level may
+be used either for some specific log type or for a subset of types.
+
+SFC EFX PMD provides the following log types available for control:
+
+- ``pmd.net.sfc.driver`` (default level is **6** - ``RTE_LOG_NOTICE``)
+
+ Affects driver-wide messages unrelated to any particular devices.
+
+- ``pmd.net.sfc.main`` (default level is **6** - ``RTE_LOG_NOTICE``)
+
+ Matches a subset of per-port log types registered during runtime.
+ A full name for a particular type may be obtained by appending a
+ dot and a PCI device identifier (``XXXX:XX:XX.X``) to the prefix.
+
+- ``pmd.net.sfc.mcdi`` (default level is **6** - ``RTE_LOG_NOTICE``)
+
+ Extra logging of the communication with the NIC's management CPU.
+ The format of the log is consumed by the Solarflare netlogdecode
+ cross-platform tool. May be managed per-port, as explained above.