46. NTNIC Poll Mode Driver
The NTNIC PMD provides poll mode driver support for Napatech smartNICs.
46.1. Design
The NTNIC PMD is designed as a pure user-space driver, and requires no special Napatech kernel modules.
The Napatech smartNIC presents one control PCI device (PF0). NTNIC PMD accesses smartNIC PF0 via vfio-pci kernel driver. Access to PF0 for all purposes is exclusive, so only one process should access it. The physical ports are located behind PF0 as DPDK port 0 and 1.
46.2. Supported NICs
NT200A02 2x100G SmartNIC
FPGA ID 9563 (Inline Flow Management)
All information about NT200A02 can be found by link below: https://www.napatech.com/products/nt200a02-smartnic-inline/
46.3. Features
FW version
Speed capabilities
Link status (Link update only)
Unicast MAC filter
Multicast MAC filter
Promiscuous mode (Enable only. The device always run promiscuous mode)
46.3.1. Limitations
Linux kernel versions before 5.7 are not supported. Kernel version 5.7 added vfio-pci support for creating VFs from the PF which is required for the PMD to use vfio-pci on the PF. This support has been back-ported to older Linux distributions and they are also supported. If vfio-pci is not required, kernel version 4.18 is supported.