[GSoC'20 intro & progress] NetFPGA SUME reference NIC device driver

[Denis Salopek]

Hi all,

The aim of this project is to create a device driver for NetFPGA SUME (a
development board with a Virtex-7 FPGA and 4 SFP+ 10 Gbps ports). This
would enable the use of this board as a 4x 10Gbps NIC on FreeBSD, along
with Netmap support for fast-throughput packet processing.

*Mentors*
Marko Zec, Bjoern A. Zeeb (zec at fer.hr, bz at freebsd.org)

*My progress in the last few weeks*
 - set up the environment (fresh FreeBSD 12.1 installation for NetFPGA
   testing and another computer with an Intel X520 connected to the NetFPGA
   for RX/TX testing in the later stage),
 - researched iflib(4) and netgraph(4) in order to figure out how to work
   with them,
 - created an iflib/netgraph mockup driver just to see if I could make
   iflib work before trying it with the real hardware,
 - researched the existing Linux SUME driver,
 - decided that iflib is not the real tool for the job, decided to abandon
   the idea and start writing a device driver from scratch (modeled by the
   Linux driver),
 - created a dummy driver which loads/unloads when the board is connected
   and disconnected.

*My Wiki page*
https://wiki.freebsd.org/DenisSalopek

*Project Wiki page*
https://wiki.freebsd.org/SummerOfCode2020Projects/NetFPGA_SUME_Driver

*Github*
https://github.com/denisSal/ng-sume
https://github.com/denisSal/freebsd-sume

Suggestions and feedback are welcome, of course!

Best regards,
Denis