Introduction

What is XDP?

XDP or eXpress Data Path provides a high performance, programmable network data path in the Linux kernel. XDP provides bare metal packet processing at the lowest point in the software stack. Much of the huge speed gain comes from processing RX packet-pages directly out of drivers RX ring queue, before any allocations of meta-data structures like SKBs occurs.

The IO Visor Project have an introduction to XDP.

Presentations

List of XDP focused presentations:

Historically the Network Performance BoF at NetDev 1.1 (Feb 2016) was the first presentation to propose the idea of processing RX packet-pages directly out of the driver RX ring queue.

Press coverage

List of press coverage:

  • April 2016 - LWN.net covered the very early patches