[dpdk-dev] Number of memory channels per processor socket?

[Abhishek Verma <abhishekv.verma@gmail.com>]

Hi,

I am new to DPDK and i tried searching the archives in case this had been
discussed but couldnt find any references and hence this email:

What is the significance of " -n NUM: Number of memory channels per
processor socket" which is passed as an EAL option? I have a virtual
machine (VM) spawned using VirtualBox and i am trying to use DPDK to get
faster access to packets there. I did lscpu, but that didnt give me
anything interesting that i could use here:

abhishekV@VirtualBox:~/dpdk/dpdk-2.0.0/x86_64-native-linuxapp-gcc/app$ sudo
lscpu
[sudo] password for abhishekV:

Architecture:          x86_64
CPU op-mode(s):        32-bit, 64-bit
Byte Order:            Little Endian
CPU(s):                2
On-line CPU(s) list:   0,1
Thread(s) per core:    1
Core(s) per socket:    2
Socket(s):             1
NUMA node(s):          1
Vendor ID:             GenuineIntel
CPU family:            6
Model:                 58
Stepping:              9
CPU MHz:               2594.017
BogoMIPS:              5188.03
L1d cache:             32K
L1d cache:             32K
L2d cache:             6144K
NUMA node0 CPU(s):     0,1
abhishekV@VirtualBox:~/dpdk/dpdk-2.0.0/x86_64-native-linuxapp-gcc/app$

I understand that i have two cores and hence should use -c 1 (since i have
cores 0 and 1). However, i dont understand what to give as the "-n" option.
Is it always 4?

Thanks, Abhishek