numam-dpdk/doc/guides/rel_notes/release_17_11.rst

DPDK Release 17.11
==================

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New Features
------------

.. This section should contain new features added in this release. Sample
   format:

   * **Add a title in the past tense with a full stop.**

     Add a short 1-2 sentence description in the past tense. The description
     should be enough to allow someone scanning the release notes to
     understand the new feature.

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     this:

     * Added feature foo to do something.
     * Enhanced feature bar to do something else.

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     This section is a comment. do not overwrite or remove it.
     Also, make sure to start the actual text at the margin.
     =========================================================

* **Extended port_id range from uint8_t to uint16_t.**

  Increased port_id range from 8 bits to 16 bits in order to support more than
  256 ports in dpdk. All ethdev APIs which have port_id as parameter are changed
  in the meantime.

* **Modified the return type of rte_eth_stats_reset.**

  Changed return type of ``rte_eth_stats_reset`` from ``void`` to ``int``
  so the caller may know whether a device supports the operation or not
  and if the operation was carried out.

* **Added a new driver for Marvell Armada 7k/8k devices.**

  Added the new mrvl net driver for Marvell Armada 7k/8k devices. See the
  "Network Interface Controller Drivers" document for more details on this new
  driver.

* **Updated mlx5 driver.**

  Updated the mlx5 driver including the following changes:

   * Enabled PMD to run on top of upstream linux kernel and rdma-core libs.
     By that removed the dependency on specific Mellanox OFED libraries.
   * Improved PMD latency performance.
   * Improved PMD memory footprint.
   * Supported vectorized Rx/Tx burst for ARMv8.
   * Supported secondary process.
   * Supported flow counters.
   * Supported Rx hardware timestamp offload.
   * Supported device removal event.

* **Added SoftNIC PMD.**

  Added new SoftNIC PMD. This virtual device offers applications a software
  fallback support for traffic management.

* **Added support for NXP DPAA Devices.**

  Added support for NXP's DPAA devices - LS104x series. This includes:

  * DPAA Bus driver
  * DPAA Mempool driver for supporting offloaded packet memory pool
  * DPAA PMD for DPAA devices

  See the "Network Interface Controller Drivers" document for more details of
  this new driver.

* **nfp: Added PF support.**

  Previously Netronome's NFP PMD had just support for VFs. PF support is
  just as a basic DPDK port and has no VF management yet.

  PF support comes with firmware upload support which allows the PMD to
  independently work from kernel netdev NFP drivers.

  NFP 4000 devices are also now supported along with previous 6000 devices.

* **Updated bnxt PMD.**

  Major enhancements include:

   * Support for Flow API
   * Support for Tx and Rx descriptor status functions

* **Add bus agnostic functions to cryptodev for PMD initialisation**

  Adds new PMD assist functions ``rte_cryptodev_pmd_parse_input_args()``,
  ``rte_cryptodev_pmd_create()`` and ``rte_cryptodev_pmd_destroy()`` which
  are bus independent for driver to manage creation and destruction of new
  device instances.

* **Updated QAT crypto PMD.**

  Performance enhancements:

  * Removed atomics from the internal queue pair structure.
  * Coalesce writes to HEAD CSR on response processing.
  * Coalesce writes to TAIL CSR on request processing.

  Additional support for:

  * AES CCM algorithm.

* **Updated the AESNI MB PMD.**

  The AESNI MB PMD has been updated with additional support for:

  * DES CBC algorithm.
  * DES DOCSIS BPI algorithm.

  This requires the IPSec Multi-buffer library 0.47. For more details,
  check out the AESNI MB PMD documenation.

* **Updated the OpenSSL PMD.**

  The OpenSSL PMD has been updated with additional support for:

  * DES CBC algorithm.
  * AES CCM algorithm.

* **Added NXP DPAA SEC crypto PMD.**

  A new "dpaa_sec" hardware based crypto PMD for NXP DPAA devices has been
  added. See the "Crypto Device Drivers" document for more details on this
  driver.

* **Added MRVL crypto PMD.**

  A new crypto PMD has been added, which provides several ciphering and hashing
  algorithms. All cryptography operations use the MUSDK library crypto API.

* **Add new benchmarking mode to dpdk-test-crypto-perf application.**

  Added new "PMD cyclecount" benchmark mode to dpdk-test-crypto-perf application
  that displays more detailed breakdown of CPU cycles used by hardware
  acceleration.

* **Added IOMMU support to libvhost-user**

  Implemented device IOTLB in Vhost-user backend, and enabled Virtio's IOMMU
  feature.

* **Added the Event Ethernet Adapter Library.**

  Added the Event Ethernet Adapter library. It provices APIs for
  eventdev applications to configure the ethdev to eventdev packet flow.

* **Added Membership library (rte_member).**

  Added membership library. It provides an API for DPDK applications to insert a
  new member, delete an existing member, or query the existence of a member in a
  given set, or a group of sets. For the case of a group of sets the library
  will return not only whether the element has been inserted before in one of
  the sets but also which set it belongs to.

  The Membership Library is an extension and generalization of a traditional
  filter (for example Bloom Filter) structure that has multiple usages in a wide
  variety of workloads and applications. In general, the Membership Library is a
  data structure that provides a “set-summary” and responds to set-membership
  queries whether a certain member belongs to a set(s).

  See the :ref:`Membership Library <Member_Library>` documentation in
  the Programmers Guide document, for more information.

* **Added the Generic Segmentation Offload Library.**

  Added the Generic Segmentation Offload (GSO) library to enable
  applications to split large packets (e.g. MTU is 64KB) into small
  ones (e.g. MTU is 1500B). Supported packet types are:

  * TCP/IPv4 packets.
  * VxLAN packets, which must have an outer IPv4 header, and contain
    an inner TCP/IPv4 packet.
  * GRE packets, which must contain an outer IPv4 header, and inner
    TCP/IPv4 headers.

  The GSO library doesn't check if the input packets have correct
  checksums, and doesn't update checksums for output packets.
  Additionally, the GSO library doesn't process IP fragmented packets.

* **Added the Flow Classification Library.**

  Added the Flow Classification library, it provides an API for DPDK
  applications to classify an input packet by matching it against a set of flow
  rules. It uses the librte_table API to manage the flow rules.


Resolved Issues
---------------

.. This section should contain bug fixes added to the relevant
   sections. Sample format:

   * **code/section Fixed issue in the past tense with a full stop.**

     Add a short 1-2 sentence description of the resolved issue in the past
     tense.

     The title should contain the code/lib section like a commit message.

     Add the entries in alphabetic order in the relevant sections below.

   This section is a comment. do not overwrite or remove it.
   Also, make sure to start the actual text at the margin.
   =========================================================


EAL
~~~

* **Service core fails to call service callback due to atomic lock**

  In a specific configuration of multi-thread unsafe services and service
  cores, a service core previously did not correctly release the atomic lock
  on the service. This would result in the cores polling the service, but it
  looked like another thread was executing the service callback. The logic for
  atomic locking of the services has been fixed and refactored for readability.

Drivers
~~~~~~~


Libraries
~~~~~~~~~


Examples
~~~~~~~~


Other
~~~~~


Known Issues
------------

.. This section should contain new known issues in this release. Sample format:

   * **Add title in present tense with full stop.**

     Add a short 1-2 sentence description of the known issue in the present
     tense. Add information on any known workarounds.

   This section is a comment. do not overwrite or remove it.
   Also, make sure to start the actual text at the margin.
   =========================================================


API Changes
-----------

.. This section should contain API changes. Sample format:

   * Add a short 1-2 sentence description of the API change. Use fixed width
     quotes for ``rte_function_names`` or ``rte_struct_names``. Use the past
     tense.

   This section is a comment. do not overwrite or remove it.
   Also, make sure to start the actual text at the margin.
   =========================================================

* **Ethdev device name length increased**

  The size of internal device name is increased to 64 characters
  to allow for storing longer bus specific name.

* **Ethdev flag RTE_ETH_DEV_DETACHABLE was removed**

  This flag is not necessary anymore, with the new hotplug implementation.
  It is now removed from the ether library. Its semantic is expressed at the bus
  and PMD level.

* **Service cores API updated for usability**

  The service cores API has been changed, removing pointers from the API
  where possible, instead using integer IDs to identify each service. This
  simplifed application code, aids debugging, and provides better
  encapsulation. A summary of the main changes made is as follows:

  * Services identified by ID not by ``rte_service_spec`` pointer
  * Reduced API surface by using ``set`` functions instead of enable/disable
  * Reworked ``rte_service_register`` to provide the service ID to registrar
  * Rework start and stop APIs into ``rte_service_runstate_set``
  * Added API to set runstate of service implementation to indicate readyness

* **The following changes made in mempool library**

  * Moved ``flags`` datatype from int to unsigned int for ``rte_mempool``.
  * Removed ``__rte_unused int flag`` param from ``rte_mempool_generic_put``
    and ``rte_mempool_generic_get`` API.
  * Added ``flags`` param in ``rte_mempool_xmem_size`` and
    ``rte_mempool_xmem_usage``.

* Xen dom0 in EAL was removed, as well as xenvirt PMD and vhost_xen.

* ``rte_mem_phy2mch`` was used in Xen dom0 to obtain the physical address;
  remove this API as Xen dom0 support was removed.

* **PCI bus API moved outside of the EAL**

  The PCI bus previously implemented within the EAL has been moved.
  A first part has been added as an RTE library providing PCI helpers to
  parse device locations or other such utilities.
  A second part consisting in the actual bus driver has been moved to its
  proper subdirectory, without changing its functionalities.

  As such, several PCI-related functions are not proposed by the EAL anymore:

  * rte_pci_detach
  * rte_pci_dump
  * rte_pci_ioport_map
  * rte_pci_ioport_read
  * rte_pci_ioport_unmap
  * rte_pci_ioport_write
  * rte_pci_map_device
  * rte_pci_probe
  * rte_pci_probe_one
  * rte_pci_read_config
  * rte_pci_register
  * rte_pci_scan
  * rte_pci_unmap_device
  * rte_pci_unregister
  * rte_pci_write_config

  These functions are made available either as part of ``librte_pci`` or
  ``librte_bus_pci``.

* **Add return value to stats_get dev op API**

  The ``stats_get`` dev op API return value has been changed to be int.
  By this way PMDs can return an error value in case of failure at stats
  getting process time.

* **Modified the rte_cryptodev_allocate_driver function in the cryptodev library.**

  The function ``rte_cryptodev_allocate_driver()`` has been modified.
  An extra parameter ``struct cryptodev_driver *crypto_drv`` has been added.

* **Removed virtual device bus specific functions from librte_cryptodev.**

  The functions ``rte_cryptodev_vdev_parse_init_params()`` and
  ``rte_cryptodev_vdev_pmd_init()`` have been removed from librte_cryptodev
  and have been replaced by non bus specific functions
  ``rte_cryptodev_pmd_parse_input_args()`` and ``rte_cryptodev_pmd_create()``.

* **Removed PCI device bus specific functions from librte_cryptodev.**

  The functions ``rte_cryptodev_pci_generic_probe()`` and
  ``rte_cryptodev_pci_generic_remove()`` have been removed from librte_cryptodev
  and have been replaced by non bus specific functions
  ``rte_cryptodev_pmd_create()`` and ``rte_cryptodev_pmd_destroy()``.

* **Removed deprecated functions to manage log level or type.**

  The functions ``rte_set_log_level()``, ``rte_get_log_level()``,
  ``rte_set_log_type()`` and ``rte_get_log_type()`` have been removed.
  They are respectively replaced by ``rte_log_set_global_level()``,
  ``rte_log_get_global_level()``, ``rte_log_set_level()`` and
  ``rte_log_get_level()``.

* **Removed ``mbuf`` flags ``PKT_RX_VLAN_PKT`` and ``PKT_RX_QINQ_PKT``.**

  The ``mbuf`` flags ``PKT_RX_VLAN_PKT`` and ``PKT_RX_QINQ_PKT`` have
  been removed since their behavior were not properly described.

* **Added ``mbuf`` flags ``PKT_RX_VLAN`` and ``PKT_RX_QINQ``.**

  Two ``mbuf`` flags have been added to indicate that the VLAN
  identifier has been saved in in the ``mbuf`` structure. For instance:

  - if VLAN is not stripped and TCI is saved: ``PKT_RX_VLAN``
  - if VLAN is stripped and TCI is saved: ``PKT_RX_VLAN | PKT_RX_VLAN_STRIPPED``

* **Modified the vlan_offload_set_t function prototype in the ethdev library.**

  Changed the function prototype of ``vlan_offload_set_t``.  The return value
  has been changed from ``void`` to ``int`` so the caller to knows whether
  the backing device supports the operation or if the operation was
  successfully performed.


ABI Changes
-----------

.. This section should contain ABI changes. Sample format:

   * Add a short 1-2 sentence description of the ABI change that was announced
     in the previous releases and made in this release. Use fixed width quotes
     for ``rte_function_names`` or ``rte_struct_names``. Use the past tense.

   This section is a comment. do not overwrite or remove it.
   Also, make sure to start the actual text at the margin.
   =========================================================

* **Extended port_id range.**

  The size of the field ``port_id`` in the ``rte_eth_dev_data`` structure
  changed, as described in the `New Features` section.


Removed Items
-------------

.. This section should contain removed items in this release. Sample format:

   * Add a short 1-2 sentence description of the removed item in the past
     tense.

   This section is a comment. do not overwrite or remove it.
   Also, make sure to start the actual text at the margin.
   =========================================================

* The crypto performance unit tests have been removed,
  replaced by the dpdk-test-crypto-perf application.


Shared Library Versions
-----------------------

.. Update any library version updated in this release and prepend with a ``+``
   sign, like this:

     librte_acl.so.2
   + librte_cfgfile.so.2
     librte_cmdline.so.2

   This section is a comment. do not overwrite or remove it.
   =========================================================


The libraries prepended with a plus sign were incremented in this version.

.. code-block:: diff

     librte_acl.so.2
   + librte_bitratestats.so.2
     librte_cfgfile.so.2
     librte_cmdline.so.2
   + librte_cryptodev.so.4
     librte_distributor.so.1
   + librte_eal.so.6
   + librte_ethdev.so.8
   + librte_eventdev.so.3
   + librte_flow_classify.so.1
     librte_gro.so.1
   + librte_gso.so.1
     librte_hash.so.2
     librte_ip_frag.so.1
     librte_jobstats.so.1
     librte_kni.so.2
     librte_kvargs.so.1
     librte_latencystats.so.1
     librte_lpm.so.2
     librte_mbuf.so.3
     librte_mempool.so.2
     librte_meter.so.1
     librte_metrics.so.1
     librte_net.so.1
   + librte_pci.so.1
   + librte_pdump.so.2
     librte_pipeline.so.3
   + librte_pmd_bnxt.so.2
   + librte_pmd_bond.so.2
   + librte_pmd_i40e.so.2
   + librte_pmd_ixgbe.so.2
     librte_pmd_ring.so.2
   + librte_pmd_softnic.so.1
   + librte_pmd_vhost.so.2
     librte_port.so.3
     librte_power.so.1
     librte_reorder.so.1
     librte_ring.so.1
     librte_sched.so.1
   + librte_security.so.1
   + librte_table.so.3
     librte_timer.so.1
     librte_vhost.so.3


Tested Platforms
----------------

.. This section should contain a list of platforms that were tested with this
   release.

   The format is:

   * <vendor> platform with <vendor> <type of devices> combinations

     * List of CPU
     * List of OS
     * List of devices
     * Other relevant details...

   This section is a comment. do not overwrite or remove it.
   Also, make sure to start the actual text at the margin.
   =========================================================