> On Mar 8, 2017, at 8:25 AM, Ferruh Yigit <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 3/8/2017 1:35 PM, raman geetha gopalakrishnan wrote: >> Hi All, >> >> I have the following basic question. Hope to get an answer / link where i >> can get myself clear. >> >> 1. In DPDK PMD is optimized driver for an given NIC to get maximum >> performance. >> That being the case why we are talking about DPDK supported NICs. >> >> A) My assumption is that NIC interface is standardized so that PMD >> should actually work with any NIC (barring some NIC specific performance >> tweaks) >> is that correct? > > PMDs (Poll Mode Drivers) are _real_ device drivers, they are not an > optimization layer on top off a standardized interface, they deal > directly with hardware, so needs to be specific to hardware. > >> >> B) if #A is correct , how can i make changes to PMD to support any NIC >> ? >> >> if i have to put the above question in different way then it is >> >> 2. what is preventing us from having a common PMD layer for all NICs and >> additional PMD specific to each NIC???
Another minor point is DPDK has a generic API layer for the ethernet NICs it is called ethdev with a set of standard APIs for the application. The PMDs attached themselves to the ethdev using standardized APIs, which is about as close we can get to a standard interface to PMDs/hardware. >> >> Thanks >> Raman >> > Regards, Keith
