DPDK Summit North America 2021

DPDK adopted C11 memory model in 20.08 release. One of the major issues the developers face with the C11 memory model is validating the correctness of the algorithms since it is difficult or impossible to write test cases for every possible race condition. Many programmers have resorted to rudimentary tools like memory order diagrams or their own understanding of the memory model. This often leads to code that seems to work but is incorrect from the C11 standard perspective. Hence, we need standard tools to validate the algorithms.  This presentation introduces one such tool - herd7. The presentation will take couple of algorithms from DPDK, show how to represent them in herd7, run the representation and interpret the output.  This tool will help the developers to create algorithms easily and quickly. This tool can also be used in review of future algorithms that are introduced in DPDK.