>-----Original Message----- >From: Thomas Monjalon [mailto:tho...@monjalon.net] >Sent: 8. januar 2018 16:16 >To: Finn Christensen <f...@napatech.com> >Cc: dev@dpdk.org >Subject: Re: [dpdk-dev] Napatech pmd > >Hi, > >08/01/2018 14:08, Finn Christensen: >> Hi Thomas, >> >> Thanks for bringing this discussion up again. >> >> The Napatech PMD is build on top of our proprietary driver. The reason is >basically that we utilize many years of driver development and thus reuses >the FPGA controlling code in the DPDK PMD. The Napatech driver suite is still >closed source. >> The current NTNIC PMD dynamically links a Napatech proprietary NTAPI >library to control the FPGA on our NICs. >> >> We did think of the PMD as being our responsibility to keep updated >towards the Napatech NIC communication, and that we would be engaged >and asked to modify accordingly if changes in DPDK required that >(maintainer). Furthermore, the PMD compiles with no issues, when NTNIC is >enabled. >> We have plans to write a stand-alone PMD, but this is not a small task to do, >therefore we haven't got to that yet. > >This standalone PMD would be open and BSD licensed?
Yes! > >> If the DPDK community would accept the dynamic linking to a proprietary >library, from inside our PMD, then it would be great. > >Dynamic linking is OK. >I think we can accept such PMD at the condition that we can build it, meaning >we can easily download the build dependencies for free. That sounds great. This was also our initial thoughts about the implementation. I will try to start this task up again and next step, I guess, will be a new RFC for a new Napatech pmd. > >> Let me know what you think. Or maybe you have ideas to what else we >could do to make it upstream. > >My thinking is to allow every hardware to have a good DPDK support. >Every step in this direction is a progress. Thanks, Finn
