Memif/vhost-user DPDK Drivers

[infinitydon]

Hi,

Does the DPDK feature of the CU/DU support other implementations like memif/vhost-user apart from vfio-pci..

Sample architecture is shown below:

      +-----------+
      |    CU/DU    |
      memif0/1-slave
      +-----------+
           || 
   +----------------+
      memif0/1-master
      |    VPP    |
     memif0/2-master
   +-----------------+
          ||
      +-----------+
     memif0/2-slave
      |    UPF    |
      +-----------+

Example reasons for this kind of config:

• Situations where single physical interface is to be shared among the CNFs, whereby a central VPP/OVS-DPDK will be hosting the physical interface and then other CNFs will connect to the central VPP/OVS-DPDK via memif/vhost-user
• Service chaining within the same node while ensuring high throughput

[andrepuschmann]

Hey @infinitydon,
we've not used the memif PMD ourselves as there is no use-case just yet. Right now DPDK is only used for the front-haul. If we need to share a physical NIC we create VFs and to each of the VFs.

[infinitydon]

Ok. One other aspect is the case of public cloud VMs where PFs are not available and usually there is a limitation in the number of NICs that can be attached to a VM, in this case memif will be beneficial.

Just thought of sharing in case you consider this in the future.