Re: DPDK on bare-metal machine

[Antti Kantee <pooka-X3B1VOXEql0@public.gmane.org>]

On 19.06.2013 09:20, Adeel Amin wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Can anyone tell me that how I can run a DPDK application as a bare-metal (i.e. without Linux support). I've tried to run rump kernel TCP/IP stack by Antti Kantee but I'm unable to figure out that how I'll be using it to run stand alone on x86 CPU. Currently I'm running the rump kernel as a Linux application.

Hi,

As far as I've been able to gather, the open source version of DPDK does 
not include bare-metal support.  However, I'm not very knowledgeable on 
DPDK, especially on code which I cannot read myself, so maybe someone 
else can answer that better.

I do know something about rump kernels, though.  One of main future use 
cases I see is indeed to have them run on bare metal and therefore allow 
to continue use essential kernel-only implemented features but still get 
rid of the prehistoric OS overhead layer.  I have good reason to suspect 
that running rump kernels this would be easy, but as far as I know, no 
one has done the necessary work, at least not for x86.  Unless the 
bare-metal version of DPDK provides a suitable portability layer, you'd 
be looking at implementing the rump kernel hypervisor interface for bare 
metal (or bare firmware ?-).  In such a case, you might find using that 
using also the device layer from a rump kernel is the shortest path to 
initial success, with migration to DPDK only after reaching stability in 
that setup.

But, that's getting quite off-topic for this list.  Contact me off-list 
if you are serious about putting effort into the above.

   - antti