PMD for non PCI device

[Prashant Upadhyaya]

On Tue, 6 Feb 2024 at 19:43, Bruce Richardson
<bruce.richardson at intel.com> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Feb 06, 2024 at 07:36:16PM +0530, Prashant Upadhyaya wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I have a usecase where I have to evaluate writing a DPDK PMD for a non
> > PCI/e device doing the ethernet packet i/o.
> >
> > Wanted to know if the above usecase is supported by DPDK infra and any
> > pointers on how one should go about writing a PMD for such a usecase
> > if supported. Would appreciate any inputs.
> >
> Hi,
>
> yes, such a usecase is supported, but the specifics of how to go about it
> will vary depending on the type of PMD it is. DPDK already supports a range
> of other types of PMD, for emulated, or SW backed PMDs, e.g. net/pcap
> driver, and drivers for various SoCs which don't use PCI. For the case
> where the PMD is backed by real hardware (or an emulated device that
> appears to a VM as a piece of hardware), you may want to consider writing a
> "bus" driver for DPDK to support probing of the device. For non-HW
> devices, the "vdev" bus may be what you want to use, where probing is not
> done and devices are created in response to cmdline arguments on init, or
> via C APIs later in the app.
>
> Regards,
> /Bruce

Thanks Bruce, this is helpful. Is there any PMD in DPDK code that you
can refer me to for any SoC which does not use PCI (the usecase of
backing by real hardware), that would be great to follow.

Regards
-Prashant