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SR-IOV & DPDK: Kernel-Bypass Networking

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Kernel-bypass: removing the OS from the data path

The Linux networking stack adds ~50–100 µs of latency per packet: syscalls, socket buffers, softirq processing, multiple memory copies. For applications handling millions of packets per second — 5G packet cores, high-frequency trading, network functions — this overhead is the bottleneck.

SR-IOV and DPDK attack this from two angles: SR-IOV virtualizes the NIC hardware so VMs get direct PCIe access, while DPDK moves the NIC driver entirely into user space, allowing applications to poll the hardware directly without any kernel involvement.

Packets in motion — click to inspect:

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