xref: /dpdk/doc/guides/nics/nfb.rst (revision 1b4081870eaf2f5dca834edbf469998d43058b5c)
1..  SPDX-License-Identifier: BSD-3-Clause
2    Copyright 2019 Cesnet
3    Copyright 2019 Netcope Technologies
4
5NFB poll mode driver library
6=================================
7
8The NFB poll mode driver library implements support for the Netcope
9FPGA Boards (**NFB-40G2, NFB-100G2, NFB-200G2QL**) and Silicom **FB2CGG3** card,
10FPGA-based programmable NICs. The NFB PMD uses interface provided by the libnfb
11library to communicate with these cards over the nfb layer.
12
13More information about the
14`NFB cards <https://www.liberouter.org/technologies/cards/>`_
15and used technology
16(`Network Development Kit <https://www.liberouter.org/ndk/>`_)
17can be found on the `Liberouter website <http://www.liberouter.org/>`_.
18
19.. note::
20
21   Currently the driver is supported only on x86_64 architectures.
22   Only x86_64 versions of the external libraries are provided.
23
24Prerequisites
25-------------
26
27This PMD requires kernel modules which are responsible for initialization and
28allocation of resources needed for nfb layer function.
29Communication between PMD and kernel modules is mediated by libnfb library.
30These kernel modules and library are not part of DPDK and must be installed
31separately:
32
33*  **libnfb library**
34
35   The library provides API for initialization of nfb transfers, receiving and
36   transmitting data segments.
37
38*  **Kernel modules**
39
40   * nfb
41
42   Kernel modules manage initialization of hardware, allocation and
43   sharing of resources for user space applications.
44
45Dependencies can be found here:
46`Netcope common <https://github.com/CESNET/ndk-sw>`_.
47
48Versions of the packages
49~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
50
51The minimum version of the provided packages:
52
53* for DPDK from 19.05
54
55Configuration
56-------------
57
58Timestamps
59
60The PMD supports hardware timestamps of frame receipt on physical network interface. In order to use
61the timestamps, the hardware timestamping unit must be enabled (follow the documentation of the NFB
62products). The standard `RTE_ETH_RX_OFFLOAD_TIMESTAMP` flag can be used for this feature.
63
64When the timestamps are enabled, a timestamp validity flag is set in the MBUFs
65containing received frames and timestamp is inserted into the `rte_mbuf` struct.
66
67The timestamp is an `uint64_t` field. Its lower 32 bits represent *seconds* portion of the timestamp
68(number of seconds elapsed since 1.1.1970 00:00:00 UTC) and its higher 32 bits represent
69*nanosecond* portion of the timestamp (number of nanoseconds elapsed since the beginning of the
70second in the *seconds* portion.
71
72
73Using the NFB PMD
74----------------------
75
76Kernel modules have to be loaded before running the DPDK application.
77
78NFB card architecture
79---------------------
80
81The NFB cards are multi-port multi-queue cards, where (generally) data from any
82Ethernet port may be sent to any queue.
83They are represented in DPDK as a single port.
84
85NFB-200G2QL card employs an add-on cable which allows to connect it to two
86physical PCI-E slots at the same time (see the diagram below).
87This is done to allow 200 Gbps of traffic to be transferred through the PCI-E
88bus (note that a single PCI-E 3.0 x16 slot provides only 125 Gbps theoretical
89throughput).
90
91Although each slot may be connected to a different CPU and therefore to a different
92NUMA node, the card is represented as a single port in DPDK. To work with data
93from the individual queues on the right NUMA node, connection of NUMA nodes on
94first and last queue (each NUMA node has half of the queues) need to be checked.
95
96Limitations
97-----------
98
99Driver is usable only on Linux architecture, namely on CentOS.
100
101Since a card is always represented as a single port, but can be connected to two
102NUMA nodes, there is need for manual check where master/slave is connected.
103
104Example of usage
105----------------
106
107Read packets from 0. and 1. receive queue and write them to 0. and 1.
108transmit queue:
109
110.. code-block:: console
111
112   ./<build_dir>/app/dpdk-testpmd -l 0-3 -n 2 \
113   -- --port-topology=chained --rxq=2 --txq=2 --nb-cores=2 -i -a
114
115Example output:
116
117.. code-block:: console
118
119   [...]
120   EAL: PCI device 0000:06:00.0 on NUMA socket -1
121   EAL:   probe driver: 1b26:c1c1 net_nfb
122   PMD: Initializing NFB device (0000:06:00.0)
123   PMD: Available DMA queues RX: 8 TX: 8
124   PMD: NFB device (0000:06:00.0) successfully initialized
125   Interactive-mode selected
126   Auto-start selected
127   Configuring Port 0 (socket 0)
128   Port 0: 00:11:17:00:00:00
129   Checking link statuses...
130   Port 0 Link Up - speed 10000 Mbps - full-duplex
131   Done
132   Start automatic packet forwarding
133     io packet forwarding - CRC stripping disabled - packets/burst=32
134     nb forwarding cores=2 - nb forwarding ports=1
135     RX queues=2 - RX desc=128 - RX free threshold=0
136     RX threshold registers: pthresh=0 hthresh=0 wthresh=0
137     TX queues=2 - TX desc=512 - TX free threshold=0
138     TX threshold registers: pthresh=0 hthresh=0 wthresh=0
139     TX RS bit threshold=0 - TXQ flags=0x0
140   testpmd>
141