xref: /dpdk/doc/guides/prog_guide/dmadev.rst (revision 69a3c6319140b34fb714fa5bd6990cceb2ea2997)
1.. SPDX-License-Identifier: BSD-3-Clause
2   Copyright 2021 HiSilicon Limited
3
4DMA Device Library
5==================
6
7The DMA library provides a DMA device framework for management and provisioning
8of hardware and software DMA poll mode drivers, defining generic API which
9support a number of different DMA operations.
10
11
12Design Principles
13-----------------
14
15The DMA framework provides a generic DMA device framework which supports both
16physical (hardware) and virtual (software) DMA devices, as well as a generic DMA
17API which allows DMA devices to be managed and configured, and supports DMA
18operations to be provisioned on DMA poll mode driver.
19
20.. _figure_dmadev:
21
22.. figure:: img/dmadev.*
23
24The above figure shows the model on which the DMA framework is built on:
25
26 * The DMA controller could have multiple hardware DMA channels (aka. hardware
27   DMA queues), each hardware DMA channel should be represented by a dmadev.
28 * The dmadev could create multiple virtual DMA channels, each virtual DMA
29   channel represents a different transfer context.
30 * The DMA operation request must be submitted to the virtual DMA channel.
31
32
33Device Management
34-----------------
35
36Device Creation
37~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
38
39Physical DMA controllers are discovered during the PCI probe/enumeration of the
40EAL function which is executed at DPDK initialization, this is based on their
41PCI BDF (bus/bridge, device, function). Specific physical DMA controllers, like
42other physical devices in DPDK can be listed using the EAL command line options.
43
44The dmadevs are dynamically allocated by using the function
45``rte_dma_pmd_allocate`` based on the number of hardware DMA channels.
46
47
48Device Identification
49~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
50
51Each DMA device, whether physical or virtual is uniquely designated by two
52identifiers:
53
54- A unique device index used to designate the DMA device in all functions
55  exported by the DMA API.
56
57- A device name used to designate the DMA device in console messages, for
58  administration or debugging purposes.
59
60
61Device Features and Capabilities
62--------------------------------
63
64DMA devices may support different feature sets. The ``rte_dma_info_get`` API
65can be used to get the device info and supported features.
66
67Silent mode is a special device capability which does not require the
68application to invoke dequeue APIs.
69
70
71Enqueue / Dequeue APIs
72~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
73
74Enqueue APIs such as ``rte_dma_copy`` and ``rte_dma_fill`` can be used to
75enqueue operations to hardware. If an enqueue is successful, a ``ring_idx`` is
76returned. This ``ring_idx`` can be used by applications to track per operation
77metadata in an application-defined circular ring.
78
79The ``rte_dma_submit`` API is used to issue doorbell to hardware.
80Alternatively the ``RTE_DMA_OP_FLAG_SUBMIT`` flag can be passed to the enqueue
81APIs to also issue the doorbell to hardware.
82
83There are two dequeue APIs ``rte_dma_completed`` and
84``rte_dma_completed_status``, these are used to obtain the results of the
85enqueue requests. ``rte_dma_completed`` will return the number of successfully
86completed operations. ``rte_dma_completed_status`` will return the number of
87completed operations along with the status of each operation (filled into the
88``status`` array passed by user). These two APIs can also return the last
89completed operation's ``ring_idx`` which could help user track operations within
90their own application-defined rings.
91