numam-dpdk/doc/guides/nics/overview.rst
Ferruh Yigit dad1ec72a3 doc: document NIC features
Document NIC features, add more information about them and add more
implementation related support.

Signed-off-by: Ferruh Yigit <ferruh.yigit@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: John McNamara <john.mcnamara@intel.com>
Reviewed-by: Andrew Rybchenko <arybchenko@solarflare.com>
Acked-by: Shreyansh Jain <shreyansh.jain@nxp.com>
2017-08-05 11:37:09 +02:00

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Copyright 2016 6WIND S.A.
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Overview of Networking Drivers
==============================
The networking drivers may be classified in two categories:
- physical for real devices
- virtual for emulated devices
Some physical devices may be shaped through a virtual layer as for
SR-IOV.
The interface seen in the virtual environment is a VF (Virtual Function).
The ethdev layer exposes an API to use the networking functions
of these devices.
The bottom half part of ethdev is implemented by the drivers.
Thus some features may not be implemented.
There are more differences between drivers regarding some internal properties,
portability or even documentation availability.
Most of these differences are summarized below.
More details about features can be found in :doc:`features`.
.. _table_net_pmd_features:
.. include:: overview_table.txt
.. Note::
Features marked with "P" are partially supported. Refer to the appropriate
NIC guide in the following sections for details.