[dpdk-dev] DPDK Bare Metal

[dpdk-dev] DPDK Bare Metal

[daniel chapiesky]

Hello,

[This message was previously sent to "contact us" on 01.org... they
directed me to
post here instead... ]


My company is developing secure networking technology and we are currently
building a prototype of our system using the dpdk as the underlying
communications platform.  So far so good.

We are interested in finding out how much we can decrease the attack surface
of our application by going full bare metal.. (i.e. sans OS).   The mention
of a bare metal version of dpdk is one of the contributing factors for our
working on our prototype.

Can you please provide any information on the dpdk bare metal version?
Such as:

1) is it in fact - a zero OS version or is it based on a RTOS such as
those from Wind River.

2) Does the bare metal version only support one kind of processor family
such
as i7, or is it possible to target atom or arm with it as well?

3) what are the licensing terms for it?

4) are royalties required?

Thank you for your help in resolving these questions.

Sincerely,

Daniel Chapiesky

Re: [dpdk-dev] DPDK Bare Metal

[Antti Kantee]

Daniel,

On 16/05/14 22:16, daniel chapiesky wrote:
> We are interested in finding out how much we can decrease the attack surface
> of our application by going full bare metal.. (i.e. sans OS).   The mention
> of a bare metal version of dpdk is one of the contributing factors for our
> working on our prototype.
>
> Can you please provide any information on the dpdk bare metal version?
> Such as:

I don't know about _the_ bare metal version, but if I'm allowed to 
advertise a project I'm working on, I'll mention _a_ potential bare 
metal version:

The goal of rump kernels (http://rumpkernel.org/) is to provide an OS 
quality driver stack without the OS (hence *rump* kernels).  The TCP/IP 
stack provided by rump kernels already integrates with DPDK, and many 
existing POSIX-y apps "just work" on top of rump kernels in an OS-less 
environment.  It's no stretch to imagine DPDK running on a bare metal 
rump kernel platform, TCP/IP optional.

> 1) is it in fact - a zero OS version or is it based on a RTOS such as
> those from Wind River.
>
> 2) Does the bare metal version only support one kind of processor family
> such
> as i7, or is it possible to target atom or arm with it as well?
>
> 3) what are the licensing terms for it?
>
> 4) are royalties required?

Rump kernels are [based on] NetBSD, so there's support for a variety of 
architectures, including Intel, ARM, MIPS, etc.  Everything is open 
source and BSD-licensed, no royalties.  However, since the idea of the 
open source project is to provide a driver stack instead of ready-baked 
solutions, you have to write (or copypaste) the lowest bootstrap/machine 
layer yourself (*).  The good news is that, speaking from experience, 
the required lowlevel support is a simple few-nighter.

   - antti

*) feel free to call that development investment a licensing fee if it 
translates better to your finance department