xref: /dpdk/doc/guides/sample_app_ug/dist_app.rst (revision 945acb4a0d644d194f1823084a234f9c286dcf8c)
1..  BSD LICENSE
2    Copyright(c) 2010-2014 Intel Corporation. All rights reserved.
3    All rights reserved.
4
5    Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
6    modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
7    are met:
8
9    * Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
10    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
11    * Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
12    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in
13    the documentation and/or other materials provided with the
14    distribution.
15    * Neither the name of Intel Corporation nor the names of its
16    contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived
17    from this software without specific prior written permission.
18
19    THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS
20    "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT
21    LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR
22    A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT
23    OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL,
24    SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT
25    LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE,
26    DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY
27    THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT
28    (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE
29    OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
30
31Distributor Sample Application
32==============================
33
34The distributor sample application is a simple example of packet distribution
35to cores using the Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK).
36
37Overview
38--------
39
40The distributor application performs the distribution of packets that are received
41on an RX_PORT to different cores. When processed by the cores, the destination
42port of a packet is the port from the enabled port mask adjacent to the one on
43which the packet was received, that is, if the first four ports are enabled
44(port mask 0xf), ports 0 and 1 RX/TX into each other, and ports 2 and 3 RX/TX
45into each other.
46
47This application can be used to benchmark performance using the traffic
48generator as shown in the figure below.
49
50.. _figure_dist_perf:
51
52.. figure:: img/dist_perf.*
53
54   Performance Benchmarking Setup (Basic Environment)
55
56Compiling the Application
57-------------------------
58
59To compile the sample application see :doc:`compiling`.
60
61The application is located in the ``distributor`` sub-directory.
62
63Running the Application
64-----------------------
65
66#. The application has a number of command line options:
67
68   ..  code-block:: console
69
70       ./build/distributor_app [EAL options] -- -p PORTMASK
71
72   where,
73
74   *   -p PORTMASK: Hexadecimal bitmask of ports to configure
75
76#. To run the application in linuxapp environment with 10 lcores, 4 ports,
77   issue the command:
78
79   ..  code-block:: console
80
81       $ ./build/distributor_app -l 1-9,22 -n 4 -- -p f
82
83#. Refer to the DPDK Getting Started Guide for general information on running
84   applications and the Environment Abstraction Layer (EAL) options.
85
86Explanation
87-----------
88
89The distributor application consists of four types of threads: a receive
90thread (``lcore_rx()``), a distributor thread (``lcore_dist()``), a set of
91worker threads (``lcore_worker()``), and a transmit thread(``lcore_tx()``).
92How these threads work together is shown in :numref:`figure_dist_app` below.
93The ``main()`` function launches  threads of these four types.  Each thread
94has a while loop which will be doing processing and which is terminated
95only upon SIGINT or ctrl+C.
96
97The receive thread receives the packets using ``rte_eth_rx_burst()`` and will
98enqueue them to an rte_ring. The distributor thread will dequeue the packets
99from the ring and assign them to workers (using ``rte_distributor_process()`` API).
100This assignment is based on the tag (or flow ID) of the packet - indicated by
101the hash field in the mbuf. For IP traffic, this field is automatically filled
102by the NIC with the "usr" hash value for the packet, which works as a per-flow
103tag.  The distributor thread communicates with the worker threads using a
104cache-line swapping mechanism, passing up to 8 mbuf pointers at a time
105(one cache line) to each worker.
106
107More than one worker thread can exist as part of the application, and these
108worker threads do simple packet processing by requesting packets from
109the distributor, doing a simple XOR operation on the input port mbuf field
110(to indicate the output port which will be used later for packet transmission)
111and then finally returning the packets back to the distributor thread.
112
113The distributor thread will then call the distributor api
114``rte_distributor_returned_pkts()`` to get the processed packets, and will enqueue
115them to another rte_ring for transfer to the TX thread for transmission on the
116output port. The transmit thread will dequeue the packets from the ring and
117transmit them on the output port specified in packet mbuf.
118
119Users who wish to terminate the running of the application have to press ctrl+C
120(or send SIGINT to the app). Upon this signal, a signal handler provided
121in the application will terminate all running threads gracefully and print
122final statistics to the user.
123
124.. _figure_dist_app:
125
126.. figure:: img/dist_app.*
127
128   Distributor Sample Application Layout
129
130
131Debug Logging Support
132---------------------
133
134Debug logging is provided as part of the application; the user needs to uncomment
135the line "#define DEBUG" defined in start of the application in main.c to enable debug logs.
136
137Statistics
138----------
139
140The main function will print statistics on the console every second. These
141statistics include the number of packets enqueued and dequeued at each stage
142in the application, and also key statistics per worker, including how many
143packets of each burst size (1-8) were sent to each worker thread.
144
145Application Initialization
146--------------------------
147
148Command line parsing is done in the same way as it is done in the L2 Forwarding Sample
149Application. See :ref:`l2_fwd_app_cmd_arguments`.
150
151Mbuf pool initialization is done in the same way as it is done in the L2 Forwarding
152Sample Application. See :ref:`l2_fwd_app_mbuf_init`.
153
154Driver Initialization is done in same way as it is done in the L2 Forwarding Sample
155Application. See :ref:`l2_fwd_app_dvr_init`.
156
157RX queue initialization is done in the same way as it is done in the L2 Forwarding
158Sample Application. See :ref:`l2_fwd_app_rx_init`.
159
160TX queue initialization is done in the same way as it is done in the L2 Forwarding
161Sample Application. See :ref:`l2_fwd_app_tx_init`.
162