From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from mga01.intel.com (mga01.intel.com [192.55.52.88]) by dpdk.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1BFFA2C71 for ; Wed, 8 Mar 2017 15:25:33 +0100 (CET) Received: from fmsmga004.fm.intel.com ([10.253.24.48]) by fmsmga101.fm.intel.com with ESMTP/TLS/DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384; 08 Mar 2017 06:25:33 -0800 X-ExtLoop1: 1 X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="5.36,264,1486454400"; d="scan'208";a="233724162" Received: from jpantel-mobl2.amr.corp.intel.com (HELO [10.254.50.188]) ([10.254.50.188]) by fmsmga004.fm.intel.com with ESMTP; 08 Mar 2017 06:25:32 -0800 To: raman geetha gopalakrishnan , dev@dpdk.org References: From: Ferruh Yigit Message-ID: <08e21158-c6bd-d390-8913-033f3f06bb8e@intel.com> Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2017 14:25:30 +0000 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/45.7.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Subject: Re: [dpdk-dev] Reg DPDK & PMD X-BeenThere: dev@dpdk.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.15 Precedence: list List-Id: DPDK patches and discussions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 08 Mar 2017 14:25:34 -0000 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??? > > Thanks > Raman >