.. include:: <isonum.txt>
-MLX5 vDPA driver
+MLX5 vDPA Driver
================
-The MLX5 vDPA (vhost data path acceleration) driver library
+The mlx5 vDPA (vhost data path acceleration) driver library
(**librte_vdpa_mlx5**) provides support for **Mellanox ConnectX-6**,
**Mellanox ConnectX-6 Dx** and **Mellanox BlueField** families of
10/25/40/50/100/200 Gb/s adapters as well as their virtual functions (VF) in
This driver is enabled automatically when using "meson" build system which
will detect dependencies.
-
-Design
-------
-
-For security reasons and robustness, this driver only deals with virtual
-memory addresses. The way resources allocations are handled by the kernel,
-combined with hardware specifications that allow to handle virtual memory
-addresses directly, ensure that DPDK applications cannot access random
-physical memory (or memory that does not belong to the current process).
-
-The PMD can use libibverbs and libmlx5 to access the device firmware
-or directly the hardware components.
-There are different levels of objects and bypassing abilities
-to get the best performances:
-
-- Verbs is a complete high-level generic API
-- Direct Verbs is a device-specific API
-- DevX allows to access firmware objects
-- Direct Rules manages flow steering at low-level hardware layer
-
-Enabling librte_vdpa_mlx5 causes DPDK applications to be linked against
-libibverbs.
-
-A Mellanox mlx5 PCI device can be probed by either net/mlx5 driver or vdpa/mlx5
-driver but not in parallel. Hence, the user should decide the driver by the
-``class`` parameter in the device argument list.
-By default, the mlx5 device will be probed by the net/mlx5 driver.
+See :doc:`../../platform/mlx5` guide for design details,
+and which PMDs can be combined with vDPA PMD.
Supported NICs
--------------
-------------
- Mellanox OFED version: **5.0**
- see :doc:`../../nics/mlx5` guide for more Mellanox OFED details.
-
-Compilation option
-~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-
-The meson option ``ibverbs_link`` is **shared** by default,
-but can be configured to have the following values:
-
-- ``dlopen``
-
- Build PMD with additional code to make it loadable without hard
- dependencies on **libibverbs** nor **libmlx5**, which may not be installed
- on the target system.
-
- In this mode, their presence is still required for it to run properly,
- however their absence won't prevent a DPDK application from starting (with
- DPDK shared build disabled) and they won't show up as missing with ``ldd(1)``.
-
- It works by moving these dependencies to a purpose-built rdma-core "glue"
- plug-in which must be installed in a directory whose name is based
- on ``RTE_EAL_PMD_PATH`` suffixed with ``-glue``.
-
- This option has no performance impact.
-
-- ``static``
-
- Embed static flavor of the dependencies **libibverbs** and **libmlx5**
- in the PMD shared library or the executable static binary.
-
-.. note::
-
- Default armv8a configuration of meson build sets ``RTE_CACHE_LINE_SIZE``
- to 128 then brings performance degradation.
+ See :ref:`mlx5 common prerequisites <mlx5_linux_prerequisites>` for more details.
Run-time configuration
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-- **ethtool** operations on related kernel interfaces also affect the PMD.
-
Driver options
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
-- ``class`` parameter [string]
-
- Select the class of the driver that should probe the device.
- `vdpa` for the mlx5 vDPA driver.
+Please refer to :ref:`mlx5 common options <mlx5_common_driver_options>`
+for an additional list of options shared with other mlx5 drivers.
- ``event_mode`` parameter [int]
- ``no_traffic_time`` parameter [int]
- A nonzero value defines the traffic off time, in seconds, that moves the
- driver to no-traffic mode. In this mode the timer events are stopped and
- interrupts are configured to the device in order to notify traffic for the
- driver. Default value is 2s.
+ A nonzero value defines the traffic off time, in polling cycle time units,
+ that moves the driver to no-traffic mode. In this mode the polling is stopped
+ and interrupts are configured to the device in order to notify traffic for the
+ driver. Default value is 16.
- ``event_core`` parameter [int]
git.droids-corp.org / dpdk.git / blobdiff