Hi I'm new to DPDK. I'm looking at adding a backend to a high-level library (https://github.com/ska-sa/spead2) that currently has a backend using ibverbs raw ethernet QPs for kernel bypass (on mlx5 hardware).
One of the features of the high-level library is that when transmitting data, the user can point at arbitrary memory they've allocated and get zero copy, provided they pre-register memory regions first. The ibverbs backend maps the pre-registration to ibv_reg_mr, and when constructing packets it uses a segmented work request with one segment pointing at headers (in internally-managed memory) and other segment points at the user-provided memory for the payload. I'm trying to understand if I'll be able to support the same thing in DPDK, given that it seems to be geared to allocate memory for packets from mempools. It looks like mbuf's can be chained to construct a packet from non-contiguous data, and I see there are some functions like rte_pktmbuf_attach_extbuf that look promising, but I haven't yet found any high-level documentation that explains how to use it. For example - What happens to the original memory of the mbuf - is it just wasted memory? If so, should I be creating a mempool with small mbufs (just enough to hold packet headers)? - How do I pin the memory? Is rte_extmem_register the equivalent of ibv_reg_mr? It's not clear what "registering" memory with DPDK actually does. - How should I compute the iova? (in ibverbs, the driver is normally responsible for dealing with any address mapping) Thanks Bruce -- Bruce Merry Senior DSP Engineer SARAO