RE: porting VPP

Hi Greg,

We started porting VPP to FreeBSD a couple of years ago. However, it has since stalled due to a number of issues.

Please refer to the previous email regarding this.


On Mon, Oct 4, 2021 at 4:35 AM Francois ten Krooden <ftk@nanoteq.com<mailto:ftk@nanoteq.com>> wrote:

>

> Hi Santiago

>

> The patches we have made is all available on the github fork we made from the VPP repository.

> It is located at https://github.com/ftk-ntq/vpp/tree/freebsd

> So anyone who is interested can find it there.

>

> To make the VFIO support work I unfortunately have no idea.

> I am not exactly sure but I think there is some kernel work required and then an update to DPDK.

> I am not sure how much effort that would be.



I would like to take a look at this, maybe we should discuss it at the upcoming vendor summit https://wiki.freebsd.org/DevSummit/202111



> Kind Regards

>

> Francois ten Krooden

> Principal Developer

>

> Nanoteq

>         Tel: +27 12 672 7000

>         Fax: +27 12 665 1343

>         Postal: P.O. Box 7991, Centurion, 0046

>         Physical: Unit C01, Corporate Park 66, 269 Von Willich Avenue,

> Centurion

>

> ________________________________________

> From: Santiago Martinez [sm@codenetworks.net]

> Sent: Wednesday, September 22, 2021 11:22 AM

> To: freebsd-net@freebsd.org<mailto:freebsd-net@freebsd.org>

> Subject: Re: Vector Packet Processing (VPP) portability on FreeBSD

>

> Hi Francois, I hope you are doing well.

>

> It is great to hear about work/progress/updates on VPP / DPDK / Netmap

> on FBSD, even if the results are not the best.

>

> Unfortunately, I'm not a developer, so I cannot help much on the

> matter of the missing bits.

> Just wondering if those modifications that your team have done to make

> VPP run can be upstreamed or shared with the community, so maybe we

> can create a VPP package making it easier for others to deploy/test/improve.

>

> On the other hand, do you roughly know how much effort is required to

> make VFIO support at the same level as Linux?

>

> I hope it makes sense.

>

> Best regards.

>

> Santiago

>

>

> On 9/21/21 11:52 AM, Francois ten Krooden wrote:

> > Hi

> >

> > This is just some feedback for those who had an interest in this topic.

> >

> > After spending quite some time on the VPP to FreeBSD porting effort where we did manage to get VPP working with netmap, and VPP compiling with DPDK; We realised that there are some big issues that we would need to overcome. Some of these efforts are not viable for our small team to accomplish in a reasonable time frame.

> > The main issues that we have found are:

> > - Tests proved that netmap would not deliver the desired performance as it is currently implemented within VPP. The main issues here are that for every 256 packets memory seems to be allocated again, also a number of copies occur in the memory which slows down the performance.

> > - VPP relies on VFIO to map device memory into user space for processing within the application. This code is implemented in DPDK in the Linux implementation but in the FreeBSD implementation in DPDK these functions are stubbed.

> > - To interface with crypto-offloading hardware such as the QAT card from Intel, or our own card VPP/DPDK also utilize VFIO with the PCI device.

> > - As far as we have been able to see the VFIO support in FreeBSD is not at the same level as Linux, which would then require additional kernel development which is not possible in the time frame.

> >

> > Regards

> >

> > Francois ten Krooden

> > Principal Developer

> >

Regards
Kobie Fick
Senior Software Developer

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From: Greg Wallace [mailto:greg@freebsdfoundation.org]
Sent: Friday, 06 October 2023 2:36 PM
To: freebsd-net@freebsd.org
Subject: porting VPP

Hi list,

I am writing to see if anyone is familiar with VPP and/or already working on porting it to FreeBSD.

Thanks in advance!

--
Greg Wallace
Director of Partnerships & Research
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