xref: /dpdk/doc/guides/regexdevs/mlx5.rst (revision 89813a522e68076e6f50ec18b075fa57cc5ae937)
1.. SPDX-License-Identifier: BSD-3-Clause
2   Copyright 2020 Mellanox Technologies, Ltd
3
4.. include:: <isonum.txt>
5
6MLX5 RegEx driver
7=================
8
9The MLX5 RegEx (Regular Expression) driver library
10(**librte_regex_mlx5**) provides support for **Mellanox BlueField 2**
11families of 25/50/100/200 Gb/s adapters.
12
13Design
14------
15
16This PMD is configuring the RegEx HW engine.
17For the PMD to work, the application must supply
18a precompiled rule file in rof2 format.
19
20The PMD uses libibverbs and libmlx5 to access the device firmware
21or directly the hardware components.
22There are different levels of objects and bypassing abilities
23to get the best performances:
24
25- Verbs is a complete high-level generic API
26- Direct Verbs is a device-specific API
27- DevX allows to access firmware objects
28
29Enabling librte_regex_mlx5 causes DPDK applications to be linked against
30libibverbs.
31
32Mellanox mlx5 pci device can be probed by number of different pci devices,
33for example net / vDPA / RegEx. To select the RegEx PMD ``class=regex`` should
34be specified as device parameter. The RegEx device can be probed and used with
35other Mellanox devices, by adding more options in the class.
36For example: ``class=net:regex`` will probe both the net PMD and the RegEx PMD.
37
38Features
39--------
40
41- Multi segments mbuf support.
42
43Supported NICs
44--------------
45
46* Mellanox\ |reg| BlueField 2 SmartNIC
47
48Prerequisites
49-------------
50
51- BlueField 2 running Mellanox supported kernel.
52- Enable the RegEx capabilities using system call from the BlueField 2.
53- Official support is not yet released.
54
55Run-time configuration
56~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
57
58- **ethtool** operations on related kernel interfaces also affect the PMD.
59