+ Using heap API's for externally allocated memory
-Using using a set of malloc heap API's is the recommended way to use externally
+Using a set of malloc heap API's is the recommended way to use externally
allocated memory in DPDK. In this way, support for externally allocated memory
is implemented through overloading the socket ID - externally allocated heaps
will have socket ID's that would be considered invalid under normal
These API's are (as their name implies) intended to allow registering or
unregistering externally allocated memory to/from DPDK's internal page table, to
-allow API's like ``rte_virt2memseg`` etc. to work with externally allocated
+allow API's like ``rte_mem_virt2memseg`` etc. to work with externally allocated
memory. Memory added this way will not be available for any regular DPDK
allocators; DPDK will leave this memory for the user application to manage.
IOVA Mode is selected by considering what the current usable Devices on the
system require and/or support.
-Below is the 2-step heuristic for this choice.
+On FreeBSD, RTE_IOVA_PA is always the default. On Linux, the IOVA mode is
+detected based on a 2-step heuristic detailed below.
For the first step, EAL asks each bus its requirement in terms of IOVA mode
and decides on a preferred IOVA mode.
RTE_IOVA_VA), then the preferred IOVA mode is RTE_IOVA_DC (see below with the
check on Physical Addresses availability),
+If the buses have expressed no preference on which IOVA mode to pick, then a
+default is selected using the following logic:
+
+- if physical addresses are not available, RTE_IOVA_VA mode is used
+- if /sys/kernel/iommu_groups is not empty, RTE_IOVA_VA mode is used
+- otherwise, RTE_IOVA_PA mode is used
+
+In the case when the buses had disagreed on their preferred IOVA mode, part of
+the buses won't work because of this decision.
+
The second step checks if the preferred mode complies with the Physical
Addresses availability since those are only available to root user in recent
-kernels.
-
-- if the preferred mode is RTE_IOVA_PA but there is no access to Physical
- Addresses, then EAL init fails early, since later probing of the devices
- would fail anyway,
-- if the preferred mode is RTE_IOVA_DC then EAL selects the RTE_IOVA_VA mode.
- In the case when the buses had disagreed on the IOVA Mode at the first step,
- part of the buses won't work because of this decision.
+kernels. Namely, if the preferred mode is RTE_IOVA_PA but there is no access to
+Physical Addresses, then EAL init fails early, since later probing of the
+devices would fail anyway.
.. note::
- The RTE_IOVA_VA mode is selected as the default for the following reasons:
+ The RTE_IOVA_VA mode is preferred as the default in most cases for the
+ following reasons:
- All drivers are expected to work in RTE_IOVA_VA mode, irrespective of
physical address availability.
``RTE_PCI_DRV_NEED_IOVA_AS_VA`` flag is used to dictate that this PCI
driver can only work in RTE_IOVA_VA mode.
+ When the KNI kernel module is detected, RTE_IOVA_PA mode is preferred as a
+ performance penalty is expected in RTE_IOVA_VA mode.
+
IOVA Mode Configuration
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Alternatively, applications can use the lock-free stack mempool handler. When
considering this handler, note that:
- - It is currently limited to the x86_64 platform, because it uses an
- instruction (16-byte compare-and-swap) that is not yet available on other
+ - It is currently limited to the aarch64 and x86_64 platforms, because it uses
+ an instruction (16-byte compare-and-swap) that is not yet available on other
platforms.
- It has worse average-case performance than the non-preemptive rte_ring, but
software caching (e.g. the mempool cache) can mitigate this by reducing the
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