X-Git-Url: http://git.droids-corp.org/?a=blobdiff_plain;f=doc%2Fguides%2Fprog_guide%2Fenv_abstraction_layer.rst;h=6e59faeea9f3168eb1bdfc90d5fcd6e7530b6d34;hb=a2aafb9aa6517160a2621e2140e36d67326190d5;hp=1d63675e2e841604fe11e600524b0fb90e3dee64;hpb=b76fafb174d2cd5247c3573bb3d49444e195e760;p=dpdk.git

diff --git a/doc/guides/prog_guide/env_abstraction_layer.rst b/doc/guides/prog_guide/env_abstraction_layer.rst
index 1d63675e2e..6e59faeea9 100644
--- a/doc/guides/prog_guide/env_abstraction_layer.rst
+++ b/doc/guides/prog_guide/env_abstraction_layer.rst
@@ -425,7 +425,8 @@ IOVA Mode Detection
 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.
@@ -438,17 +439,41 @@ 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.
+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 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.
+    - By default, the mempool, first asks for IOVA-contiguous memory using
+      ``RTE_MEMZONE_IOVA_CONTIG``. This is slow in RTE_IOVA_PA mode and it may
+      affect the application boot time.
+    - It is easy to enable large amount of IOVA-contiguous memory use-cases
+      with IOVA in VA mode.
+
+    It is expected that all PCI drivers work in both RTE_IOVA_PA and
+    RTE_IOVA_VA modes.
 
-- 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 based on the Physical Addresses
-  availability, the preferred mode is adjusted to RTE_IOVA_PA or RTE_IOVA_VA.
-  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.
+    If a PCI driver does not support RTE_IOVA_PA mode, the
+    ``RTE_PCI_DRV_NEED_IOVA_AS_VA`` flag is used to dictate that this PCI
+    driver can only work in RTE_IOVA_VA mode.
 
 IOVA Mode Configuration
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
@@ -623,8 +648,8 @@ Known Issues
   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