[dpdk-dev] bifurcated driver

[Luke Gorrie]

On 5 November 2014 at 14:00, Thomas Monjalon <thomas.monjalon at 6wind.com>
wrote:

> It seems to be close to the bifurcated driver needs.
> Not sure if it can solve the security issues if there is no dedicated MMU
> in the NIC.
>
> I feel we should sum up pros and cons of
>         - igb_uio
>         - uio_pci_generic
>         - VFIO
>         - ibverbs
>         - bifurcated driver
>

I am also curious about the pros and cons of the bifurcated driver compared
with SR-IOV.

What are the practical differences between running a bifurcated driver vs.
running SR-IOV mode where the kernel owns the PF and userspace applications
own the VFs?

Specifically, could I run the ixgbe driver in the kernel (max_vfs=N),
control it via ethtool, and then access the queues via userspace VF
drivers? If so, how would this differ from the bifurcated driver?

Cheers,
-Luke