Here are some notes from the DPDK Network Stack discussion, I can remember please help me fill in anything I missed.
Items I remember we talked about:
* The only reason for a DPDK TCP/IP stack is for performance and possibly lower latency
* Meaning the developer is willing to re-write or write his application to get the best performance.
* A TCP/IPv4/v6 stack is the minimum stack we need to support applications linked with DPDK.
* SCTP is also another protocol that maybe required
* TCP is the primary protocol, usage model for most use cases
* Stack must be able to terminate TCP traffic to an application linked to DPDK
* For DPDK the customer is looking for fast applications and is willing to write the application just for DPDK network stack
* Converting an existing application could be done, but the design is for performance and may require a lot of changes to an application
* Using an application API that is not Socket is fine for high performance and maybe the only way we get best performance.
* Need to supply a Socket layer interface as a option if customer is willing to take a performance hit instead of rewriting the application
* Native application acceleration is desired, but not required when using DPDK network stack
* We have two projects related to network stack in DPDK
* The first one is porting some TCP/IP stack to DPDK plus it needs to give a reasonable performance increase over native Linux applications
* The stack code needs to be BSD/MIT like licensed (Open Sourced)
* The stack should be up to date with the latest RFCs or at least close
* A stack could be written for DPDK (not using a existing code base) and its environment for best performance
* Need to be able to configure the DPDK stack(s) from the Linux command line tools if possible
* Need a DPDK specific application layer API for application to interface with the network stack
* Could have a socket layer API on top of the specific API for applications needing to use sockets (not expected to be the best performance)
* The second item is figuring out a new IPC for East/West traffic within the same system.
* The design needs to improve performance between applications and be transparent to the application when the remote end is not on the same system.
* The new IPC path should be agnostic to local or remote end points
* Needs to be very fast compared to current Linux IPC designs. (Will OVS work here?)
Did I miss any details or comments, please reply and help me correct the comment or understanding.
Thanks for everyone attending and packing into a small space.
—
Regards,
++Keith Wiles
Intel Corporation