summaryrefslogtreecommitdiffstats
path: root/Documentation/networking/multi-pf-netdev.rst
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
authorLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2026-08-24 08:46:03 -0700
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2026-08-24 08:46:03 -0700
commitcf9610f9116d55c5a66ef9f1faecacabd93a9322 (patch)
tree757a3d280760c654767631cab5ad8af2d86d1848 /Documentation/networking/multi-pf-netdev.rst
downloadlinux-stable-cf9610f9116d55c5a66ef9f1faecacabd93a9322.tar.gz
linux-stable-cf9610f9116d55c5a66ef9f1faecacabd93a9322.zip
Merge tag 'pinctrl-v7.3-1' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/linusw/linux-pinctrlgrafted
Pull pin control updates from Linus Walleij: "Core changes: - Use the non-blocking mux_state_try_select() in the generic MUX pin control back-end - Free pin maps on pinctrl_generic_to_map() failure in the core helpers New hardware pin control: - Qualcomm Maili TLMM SoC, PMG1110 PMIC, and Eliza LPASS LPI TLMM SoC (this is for the low power audio, LPASS = Low Power Audio SubSystem portions) - Upboard support on top of the Intel pin controller - Apple T6030 and T6031 support (just compatible strings) - Samsung Exynos 8855 SoC - Mediatek MT6858 SoC - Rockchip RK3308B and RV1106 SoCs - Airoha EN7523 and AN7563 SoCs Improvements: - Qualcomm TLMM GPIOs are unconditionally marked as wakeup capable - Qualcomm improvements on top of the Qualcomm PDC (power domain controller) irqchip improvements from tglx:s tree - Qualcomm IPQ806x and IPQ9650 non-urgent pin grop fixups - The NPCM8xx driver has been put into shape fixing many pin and group definitions - Some non-urgent Tegra 264 pin assignments are fixed up - Some non-urgent fixups to Airoha AN7581 and AN7583 registers and pin assignments, missing features etc" * tag 'pinctrl-v7.3-1' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/linusw/linux-pinctrl: (130 commits) dt-bindings: pinctrl: Convert TI DA850 pupd to DT schema pinctrl: meson: sync some modify from A4 pinctrl: meson: a4: Add input enable pin configuration pinctrl: realtek: rtd1625: remove unused group name spdif_sel pinctrl: realtek: rtd1625: fix base_bit for VE4 GPIO 13 dt-bindings: pinctrl: microchip,pic32mzda-pinctrl: Convert to DT schema Revert "Merge branch 'ib-rsk7204' into devel" pinctrl: rockchip: Add RV1106 pinctrl support dt-bindings: pinctrl: rockchip: Add RV1106 compatible pinctrl: rockchip: Decode drive strength in the get function pinctrl: fix PINCTRL_GENERIC_MUX not always being selectable pinctrl: airoha: add support of an7563 SoC dt-bindings: pinctrl: airoha: add support of an7563 pin controller pinctrl: airoha: try to find chip scu node by phandle first pinctrl: airoha: add support of en7523 SoC dt-bindings: pinctrl: airoha: add support of en7523 pin controller pinctrl: airoha: an7583: add support for olt pinmux pinctrl: airoha: an7583: add support for pon_alt pinmux pinctrl: airoha: an7583: add support for npu_uart pinmux dt-bindings: pinctrl: airoha: an7583: add missed features ...
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/networking/multi-pf-netdev.rst')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/networking/multi-pf-netdev.rst174
1 files changed, 174 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/networking/multi-pf-netdev.rst b/Documentation/networking/multi-pf-netdev.rst
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..2f5a5bb3c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/networking/multi-pf-netdev.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,174 @@
+.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
+.. include:: <isonum.txt>
+
+===============
+Multi-PF Netdev
+===============
+
+Contents
+========
+
+- `Background`_
+- `Overview`_
+- `mlx5 implementation`_
+- `Channels distribution`_
+- `Observability`_
+- `Steering`_
+- `Mutually exclusive features`_
+
+Background
+==========
+
+The Multi-PF NIC technology enables several CPUs within a multi-socket server to connect directly to
+the network, each through its own dedicated PCIe interface. Through either a connection harness that
+splits the PCIe lanes between two cards or by bifurcating a PCIe slot for a single card. This
+results in eliminating the network traffic traversing over the internal bus between the sockets,
+significantly reducing overhead and latency, in addition to reducing CPU utilization and increasing
+network throughput.
+
+Overview
+========
+
+The feature adds support for combining multiple PFs of the same port in a Multi-PF environment under
+one netdev instance. It is implemented in the netdev layer. Lower-layer instances like pci func,
+sysfs entry, and devlink are kept separate.
+Passing traffic through different devices belonging to different NUMA sockets saves cross-NUMA
+traffic and allows apps running on the same netdev from different NUMAs to still feel a sense of
+proximity to the device and achieve improved performance.
+
+mlx5 implementation
+===================
+
+Multi-PF or Socket-direct in mlx5 is achieved by grouping PFs together which belong to the same
+NIC and has the socket-direct property enabled, once all PFs are probed, we create a single netdev
+to represent all of them, symmetrically, we destroy the netdev whenever any of the PFs is removed.
+
+The netdev network channels are distributed between all devices, a proper configuration would utilize
+the correct close NUMA node when working on a certain app/CPU.
+
+We pick one PF to be a primary (leader), and it fills a special role. The other devices
+(secondaries) are disconnected from the network at the chip level (set to silent mode). In silent
+mode, no south <-> north traffic flowing directly through a secondary PF. It needs the assistance of
+the leader PF (east <-> west traffic) to function. All Rx/Tx traffic is steered through the primary
+to/from the secondaries.
+
+Currently, we limit the support to PFs only, and up to two PFs (sockets).
+
+Channels distribution
+=====================
+
+We distribute the channels between the different PFs to achieve local NUMA node performance
+on multiple NUMA nodes.
+
+Each combined channel works against one specific PF, creating all its datapath queues against it. We
+distribute channels to PFs in a round-robin policy.
+
+::
+
+ Example for 2 PFs and 5 channels:
+ +--------+--------+
+ | ch idx | PF idx |
+ +--------+--------+
+ | 0 | 0 |
+ | 1 | 1 |
+ | 2 | 0 |
+ | 3 | 1 |
+ | 4 | 0 |
+ +--------+--------+
+
+
+The reason we prefer round-robin is, it is less influenced by changes in the number of channels. The
+mapping between a channel index and a PF is fixed, no matter how many channels the user configures.
+As the channel stats are persistent across channel's closure, changing the mapping every single time
+would turn the accumulative stats less representing of the channel's history.
+
+This is achieved by using the correct core device instance (mdev) in each channel, instead of them
+all using the same instance under "priv->mdev".
+
+Observability
+=============
+The relation between PF, irq, napi, and queue can be observed via netlink spec::
+
+ $ ./tools/net/ynl/pyynl/cli.py --spec Documentation/netlink/specs/netdev.yaml --dump queue-get --json='{"ifindex": 13}'
+ [{'id': 0, 'ifindex': 13, 'napi-id': 539, 'type': 'rx'},
+ {'id': 1, 'ifindex': 13, 'napi-id': 540, 'type': 'rx'},
+ {'id': 2, 'ifindex': 13, 'napi-id': 541, 'type': 'rx'},
+ {'id': 3, 'ifindex': 13, 'napi-id': 542, 'type': 'rx'},
+ {'id': 4, 'ifindex': 13, 'napi-id': 543, 'type': 'rx'},
+ {'id': 0, 'ifindex': 13, 'napi-id': 539, 'type': 'tx'},
+ {'id': 1, 'ifindex': 13, 'napi-id': 540, 'type': 'tx'},
+ {'id': 2, 'ifindex': 13, 'napi-id': 541, 'type': 'tx'},
+ {'id': 3, 'ifindex': 13, 'napi-id': 542, 'type': 'tx'},
+ {'id': 4, 'ifindex': 13, 'napi-id': 543, 'type': 'tx'}]
+
+ $ ./tools/net/ynl/pyynl/cli.py --spec Documentation/netlink/specs/netdev.yaml --dump napi-get --json='{"ifindex": 13}'
+ [{'id': 543, 'ifindex': 13, 'irq': 42},
+ {'id': 542, 'ifindex': 13, 'irq': 41},
+ {'id': 541, 'ifindex': 13, 'irq': 40},
+ {'id': 540, 'ifindex': 13, 'irq': 39},
+ {'id': 539, 'ifindex': 13, 'irq': 36}]
+
+Here you can clearly observe our channels distribution policy::
+
+ $ ls /proc/irq/{36,39,40,41,42}/mlx5* -d -1
+ /proc/irq/36/mlx5_comp0@pci:0000:08:00.0
+ /proc/irq/39/mlx5_comp0@pci:0000:09:00.0
+ /proc/irq/40/mlx5_comp1@pci:0000:08:00.0
+ /proc/irq/41/mlx5_comp1@pci:0000:09:00.0
+ /proc/irq/42/mlx5_comp2@pci:0000:08:00.0
+
+Steering
+========
+Secondary PFs are set to "silent" mode, meaning they are disconnected from the network.
+
+In Rx, the steering tables belong to the primary PF only, and it is its role to distribute incoming
+traffic to other PFs, via cross-vhca steering capabilities. Still maintain a single default RSS table,
+that is capable of pointing to the receive queues of a different PF.
+
+In Tx, the primary PF creates a new Tx flow table, which is aliased by the secondaries, so they can
+go out to the network through it.
+
+In addition, we set default XPS configuration that, based on the CPU, selects an SQ belonging to the
+PF on the same node as the CPU.
+
+XPS default config example:
+
+NUMA node(s): 2
+NUMA node0 CPU(s): 0-11
+NUMA node1 CPU(s): 12-23
+
+PF0 on node0, PF1 on node1.
+
+- /sys/class/net/eth2/queues/tx-0/xps_cpus:000001
+- /sys/class/net/eth2/queues/tx-1/xps_cpus:001000
+- /sys/class/net/eth2/queues/tx-2/xps_cpus:000002
+- /sys/class/net/eth2/queues/tx-3/xps_cpus:002000
+- /sys/class/net/eth2/queues/tx-4/xps_cpus:000004
+- /sys/class/net/eth2/queues/tx-5/xps_cpus:004000
+- /sys/class/net/eth2/queues/tx-6/xps_cpus:000008
+- /sys/class/net/eth2/queues/tx-7/xps_cpus:008000
+- /sys/class/net/eth2/queues/tx-8/xps_cpus:000010
+- /sys/class/net/eth2/queues/tx-9/xps_cpus:010000
+- /sys/class/net/eth2/queues/tx-10/xps_cpus:000020
+- /sys/class/net/eth2/queues/tx-11/xps_cpus:020000
+- /sys/class/net/eth2/queues/tx-12/xps_cpus:000040
+- /sys/class/net/eth2/queues/tx-13/xps_cpus:040000
+- /sys/class/net/eth2/queues/tx-14/xps_cpus:000080
+- /sys/class/net/eth2/queues/tx-15/xps_cpus:080000
+- /sys/class/net/eth2/queues/tx-16/xps_cpus:000100
+- /sys/class/net/eth2/queues/tx-17/xps_cpus:100000
+- /sys/class/net/eth2/queues/tx-18/xps_cpus:000200
+- /sys/class/net/eth2/queues/tx-19/xps_cpus:200000
+- /sys/class/net/eth2/queues/tx-20/xps_cpus:000400
+- /sys/class/net/eth2/queues/tx-21/xps_cpus:400000
+- /sys/class/net/eth2/queues/tx-22/xps_cpus:000800
+- /sys/class/net/eth2/queues/tx-23/xps_cpus:800000
+
+Mutually exclusive features
+===========================
+
+The nature of Multi-PF, where different channels work with different PFs, conflicts with
+stateful features where the state is maintained in one of the PFs.
+For example, in the TLS device-offload feature, special context objects are created per connection
+and maintained in the PF. Transitioning between different RQs/SQs would break the feature. Hence,
+we disable this combination for now.