thomasbhatia / edpdk

Intel DPDK support

edpdk

A set of Erlang port commands for using Intel DPDK PMDs (Poll-Mode Drivers). Edpdk initially provides the following commands to allow an Erlang node to receive or transmit packets through DPDK PMDs.

1. Run edpdk port

Create an Erlang port with the following command:

    "edpdk -c <coremask> -n 4 -- --tx=<core:port1:portN...> --rx=<core:port1:portN...>..."
    e.g. To run edpdk with 2 cores and 2 ports,
    
        "edpdk -c 0x3 -n 4 -- --tx=0:0:1 --rx=0:0:1"
        
        -c = coremask (e.g. core 1 and 2 is 0x3)
        --tx = core-port assignment
            - e.g. core 0 will transmit to port 0 & 1
        --rx = similar to --tx but receives            
        
After successfully creating the edpdk port, one can then send the port commands specified below.

2. Receive a packet

To receive a packet the following tuple must be sent:

{recv, <<>>, PortNo}     
Where,

    Command: recv
    Packet: <<>>
        - this is always empty since we are receiving
    Port: PortNo, the source port of the ingress packet
    
Possible output:

    {ok, << packet>>} 
        - packet is received
        
    {fail, empty}
        - ingress port does not have any queued packets

2. Transmit a packet

To transmit a packet the following tuple must be sent:

{xmit, << packet>>, PortNo}
Where,

    Command: xmit
    Packet: << packet>>, the packet to be sent
    Port: PortNo, the destination port of the egress packet
    
Possible output:

    {ok, queued}
        - packet is queued for transmit
    
    {fail, full_or_busy}
        - packet can't be sent right now

The primary goal of this specific Intel DPDK application is to achieve a "fast path" for an Erlang-based packet forwarder (e.g. LINC). Based on an oversimplified experiment, a dumb packet forwarder (fwdr.erl) showed better packet forwarding performance over LINC when forwarding a packet with a very basic rule. However, this experiment only tells very little about the possibility of enhancing LINC with DPDK and it should be noted. Nevertheless, these could be a good motivation to start using DPDK PMDs when processing packets in LINC. One quite interesting idea but still an area to explore is to level up the edpdk implementation to use Erlang NIFs or linked in drivers to eliminate overhead introduced by the port communication. On the other hand, again this is still an area to explore ans as well test, because DPDK yet needs to be evauluated for these approaches due to the fact that it doesn't directly provide system integration facilities - if there is, it isn't a first class feature.

For more information on Intel DPDK please see the following links:

• dpdk.org
• Intel DPDK Packet Processing Overview ~