xref: /dpdk/doc/guides/rawdevs/ntb.rst (revision 089e5ed727a15da2729cfee9b63533dd120bd04c)
1..  SPDX-License-Identifier: BSD-3-Clause
2    Copyright(c) 2018 Intel Corporation.
3
4NTB Rawdev Driver
5=================
6
7The ``ntb`` rawdev driver provides a non-transparent bridge between two
8separate hosts so that they can communicate with each other. Thus, many
9user cases can benefit from this, such as fault tolerance and visual
10acceleration.
11
12This PMD allows two hosts to handshake for device start and stop, memory
13allocation for the peer to access and read/write allocated memory from peer.
14Also, the PMD allows to use doorbell registers to notify the peer and share
15some information by using scratchpad registers.
16
17BIOS setting on Intel Skylake
18-----------------------------
19
20Intel Non-transparent Bridge needs special BIOS setting. Since the PMD only
21supports Intel Skylake platform, introduce BIOS setting here. The referencce
22is https://www.intel.com/content/dam/support/us/en/documents/server-products/Intel_Xeon_Processor_Scalable_Family_BIOS_User_Guide.pdf
23
24- Set the needed PCIe port as NTB to NTB mode on both hosts.
25- Enable NTB bars and set bar size of bar 23 and bar 45 as 12-29 (2K-512M)
26  on both hosts. Note that bar size on both hosts should be the same.
27- Disable split bars for both hosts.
28- Set crosslink control override as DSD/USP on one host, USD/DSP on
29  another host.
30- Disable PCIe PII SSC (Spread Spectrum Clocking) for both hosts. This
31  is a hardware requirement.
32
33Build Options
34-------------
35
36- ``CONFIG_RTE_LIBRTE_PMD_NTB_RAWDEV`` (default ``y``)
37
38   Toggle compilation of the ``ntb`` driver.
39
40Device Setup
41------------
42
43The Intel NTB devices need to be bound to a DPDK-supported kernel driver
44to use, i.e. igb_uio, vfio. The ``dpdk-devbind.py`` script can be used to
45show devices status and to bind them to a suitable kernel driver. They will
46appear under the category of "Misc (rawdev) devices".
47
48Limitation
49----------
50
51- The FIFO hasn't been introduced and will come in 19.11 release.
52- This PMD only supports Intel Skylake platform.
53