1.. SPDX-License-Identifier: BSD-3-Clause 2 Copyright(c) 2010-2014 Intel Corporation. 3 4System Requirements 5=================== 6 7This chapter describes the packages required to compile the DPDK. 8 9.. note:: 10 11 If the DPDK is being used on an Intel® Communications Chipset 89xx Series platform, 12 please consult the *Intel® Communications Chipset 89xx Series Software for Linux Getting Started Guide*. 13 14BIOS Setting Prerequisite on x86 15-------------------------------- 16 17For the majority of platforms, no special BIOS settings are needed to use basic DPDK functionality. 18However, for additional HPET timer and power management functionality, 19and high performance of small packets, BIOS setting changes may be needed. 20Consult the section on :ref:`Enabling Additional Functionality <Enabling_Additional_Functionality>` 21for more information on the required changes. 22 23.. note:: 24 25 If UEFI secure boot is enabled, the Linux kernel may disallow the use of 26 UIO on the system. Therefore, devices for use by DPDK should be bound to the 27 ``vfio-pci`` kernel module rather than ``igb_uio`` or ``uio_pci_generic``. 28 For more details see :ref:`linux_gsg_binding_kernel`. 29 30Compilation of the DPDK 31----------------------- 32 33**Required Tools and Libraries:** 34 35.. note:: 36 37 The setup commands and installed packages needed on various systems may be different. 38 For details on Linux distributions and the versions tested, please consult the DPDK Release Notes. 39 40* General development tools including a supported C compiler such as gcc (version 4.9+) or clang (version 3.4+). 41 42 * For RHEL/Fedora systems these can be installed using ``dnf groupinstall "Development Tools"`` 43 44 * For Ubuntu/Debian systems these can be installed using ``apt install build-essential`` 45 46* Python 3.5 or later. 47 48* Meson (version 0.47.1+) and ninja 49 50 * ``meson`` & ``ninja-build`` packages in most Linux distributions 51 52 * If the packaged version is below the minimum version, the latest versions 53 can be installed from Python's "pip" repository: ``pip3 install meson ninja`` 54 55* Library for handling NUMA (Non Uniform Memory Access). 56 57 * ``numactl-devel`` in RHEL/Fedora; 58 59 * ``libnuma-dev`` in Debian/Ubuntu; 60 61.. note:: 62 63 Please ensure that the latest patches are applied to third party libraries 64 and software to avoid any known vulnerabilities. 65 66 67**Optional Tools:** 68 69* Intel® C++ Compiler (icc). For installation, additional libraries may be required. 70 See the icc Installation Guide found in the Documentation directory under the compiler installation. 71 72* IBM® Advance ToolChain for Powerlinux. This is a set of open source development tools and runtime libraries 73 which allows users to take leading edge advantage of IBM's latest POWER hardware features on Linux. To install 74 it, see the IBM official installation document. 75 76**Additional Libraries** 77 78A number of DPDK components, such as libraries and poll-mode drivers (PMDs) have additional dependencies. 79For DPDK builds, the presence or absence of these dependencies will be automatically detected 80enabling or disabling the relevant components appropriately. 81 82In each case, the relevant library development package (``-devel`` or ``-dev``) is needed to build the DPDK components. 83 84For libraries the additional dependencies include: 85 86* libarchive: for some unit tests using tar to get their resources. 87 88* libelf: to compile and use the bpf library. 89 90For poll-mode drivers, the additional dependencies for each driver can be 91found in that driver's documentation in the relevant DPDK guide document, 92e.g. :doc:`../nics/index` 93 94 95Running DPDK Applications 96------------------------- 97 98To run a DPDK application, some customization may be required on the target machine. 99 100System Software 101~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 102 103**Required:** 104 105* Kernel version >= 3.16 106 107 The kernel version required is based on the oldest long term stable kernel available 108 at kernel.org when the DPDK version is in development. 109 Compatibility for recent distribution kernels will be kept, notably RHEL/CentOS 7. 110 111 The kernel version in use can be checked using the command:: 112 113 uname -r 114 115* glibc >= 2.7 (for features related to cpuset) 116 117 The version can be checked using the ``ldd --version`` command. 118 119* Kernel configuration 120 121 In the Fedora OS and other common distributions, such as Ubuntu, or Red Hat Enterprise Linux, 122 the vendor supplied kernel configurations can be used to run most DPDK applications. 123 124 For other kernel builds, options which should be enabled for DPDK include: 125 126 * HUGETLBFS 127 128 * PROC_PAGE_MONITOR support 129 130 * HPET and HPET_MMAP configuration options should also be enabled if HPET support is required. 131 See the section on :ref:`High Precision Event Timer (HPET) Functionality <High_Precision_Event_Timer>` for more details. 132 133.. _linux_gsg_hugepages: 134 135Use of Hugepages in the Linux Environment 136~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 137 138Hugepage support is required for the large memory pool allocation used for packet buffers 139(the HUGETLBFS option must be enabled in the running kernel as indicated the previous section). 140By using hugepage allocations, performance is increased since fewer pages are needed, 141and therefore less Translation Lookaside Buffers (TLBs, high speed translation caches), 142which reduce the time it takes to translate a virtual page address to a physical page address. 143Without hugepages, high TLB miss rates would occur with the standard 4k page size, slowing performance. 144 145Reserving Hugepages for DPDK Use 146^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 147 148The allocation of hugepages should be done at boot time or as soon as possible after system boot 149to prevent memory from being fragmented in physical memory. 150To reserve hugepages at boot time, a parameter is passed to the Linux kernel on the kernel command line. 151 152For 2 MB pages, just pass the hugepages option to the kernel. For example, to reserve 1024 pages of 2 MB, use:: 153 154 hugepages=1024 155 156For other hugepage sizes, for example 1G pages, the size must be specified explicitly and 157can also be optionally set as the default hugepage size for the system. 158For example, to reserve 4G of hugepage memory in the form of four 1G pages, the following options should be passed to the kernel:: 159 160 default_hugepagesz=1G hugepagesz=1G hugepages=4 161 162.. note:: 163 164 The hugepage sizes that a CPU supports can be determined from the CPU flags on Intel architecture. 165 If pse exists, 2M hugepages are supported; if pdpe1gb exists, 1G hugepages are supported. 166 On IBM Power architecture, the supported hugepage sizes are 16MB and 16GB. 167 168.. note:: 169 170 For 64-bit applications, it is recommended to use 1 GB hugepages if the platform supports them. 171 172In the case of a dual-socket NUMA system, 173the number of hugepages reserved at boot time is generally divided equally between the two sockets 174(on the assumption that sufficient memory is present on both sockets). 175 176See the Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt file in your Linux source tree for further details of these and other kernel options. 177 178**Alternative:** 179 180For 2 MB pages, there is also the option of allocating hugepages after the system has booted. 181This is done by echoing the number of hugepages required to a nr_hugepages file in the ``/sys/devices/`` directory. 182For a single-node system, the command to use is as follows (assuming that 1024 pages are required):: 183 184 echo 1024 > /sys/kernel/mm/hugepages/hugepages-2048kB/nr_hugepages 185 186On a NUMA machine, pages should be allocated explicitly on separate nodes:: 187 188 echo 1024 > /sys/devices/system/node/node0/hugepages/hugepages-2048kB/nr_hugepages 189 echo 1024 > /sys/devices/system/node/node1/hugepages/hugepages-2048kB/nr_hugepages 190 191.. note:: 192 193 For 1G pages, it is not possible to reserve the hugepage memory after the system has booted. 194 195Using Hugepages with the DPDK 196^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 197 198Once the hugepage memory is reserved, to make the memory available for DPDK use, perform the following steps:: 199 200 mkdir /mnt/huge 201 mount -t hugetlbfs nodev /mnt/huge 202 203The mount point can be made permanent across reboots, by adding the following line to the ``/etc/fstab`` file:: 204 205 nodev /mnt/huge hugetlbfs defaults 0 0 206 207For 1GB pages, the page size must be specified as a mount option:: 208 209 nodev /mnt/huge_1GB hugetlbfs pagesize=1GB 0 0 210