Intel® Ethernet Controller E810 Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) 22.11/23.03

Configuration Guide

ID 764257
Date 06/16/2023
Version 22.11
Document Table of Contents

Loading the vfio-pci Module

Load the vfio-pci module with the following command:

modprobe vfio-pci

VFIO kernel is usually present by default in all distributions. If it is not, consult your distribution’s documentation for installation instructions.

To make use of full VFIO functionality, both kernel and BIOS must support and be configured to use I/O virtualization (such as Intel® VT-d).

In most cases, specifying iommu=on as kernel parameter should be enough to configure the Linux kernel to use IOMMU.

Note:VFIO no-IOMMU mode:

If there is no IOMMU available on the system, VFIO can still be used, but it must be loaded with an additional module parameter:

modprobe vfio enable_unsafe_noiommu_mode=1

Alternatively, one can also enable this option in an already loaded kernel module:

echo 1 > /sys/module/vfio/parameters/enable_unsafe_noiommu_mode

After that, VFIO can be used with hardware devices as usual.

Note that it might be required to unload all VFIO-related modules before probing the module again with the enable_​unsafe_​noiommu_​mode=1 parameter.

Warning: Since no-IOMMU mode forgoes IOMMU protection, it is inherently unsafe. That said, it does make it possible for the user to keep the degree of device access and programming that VFIO has, in situations where IOMMU is not available.