ABSTRACT
Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) is chosen as a critical software ingredient to be part of network function virtualization (NFV) concept and system architecture, and it can be used for virtual network function (VNF), container network function, and NFVI (NFV infrastructure) solutions. The first NFV white paper was published, and the document presents how to use the general server platform to provide the telecom network service. NFV becomes technically feasible due to silicon readiness, cloud virtualization technology, and open sources such as Linux, KVM, DPDK, Open vSwitch, SR-IOV. In a recent China Mobile NFV bidding, the server platform and NFV software are the main purchase package. At the silicon level, the major components are CPU, switch chip and network interface card, SSD, etc. DPDK is used on both NFVI and VNF. Linux networking stack is not sufficient for I/O, compared to the compute workload, and VNF needs high-performance I/O; it is popular to run DPDK PMD in the guest (VNF).
