DPDK: How intel dpdk solution make data plane faster ?

Question

GTP is an overhead and it slows down the data transmission speed through LTE network. I heard about intel dpdk based solution can make data path faster since it takes packet from interface card and does processing. Is there any relation between intel dpdk and SDN ?

Answer 1

I think what you are asking GTP processing in Kernel is slow because of

1. buffer copy to skb
2. network stack traversal to reach udp
3. locks and critical region for GTP processing
4. non dedicated poll for fetching GTP packets to the desired CPU
5. context switches.

Yes all these affect your packet acquisition and processing time. With userspace direct buffer DMA and burst RX/TX these are mitigated. But still the performance depends upon code and cache locality of the data. So a well written code whether it is RAW socket, AF_PACKET, DPDK or PF_RING is to be pursed rather than just RX-TX.