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Intel X710 / XXV710 / XL710

Intel's i40e-family NICs (X710, XXV710, XL710). Common silicon, common driver, common limits. The newer E810 family is documented separately.

Hardware

Family Speeds Driver
X710 4x10 GbE i40e (Linux), net_i40e (DPDK)
XXV710 2x25 GbE i40e / net_i40e
XL710 1x40 GbE or 4x10 GbE i40e / net_i40e

PCI vendor ID: 8086.

Driver strategy

vfio-pci. Device is unbound from i40e and bound to vfio-pci for DPDK. Once bound the device disappears from Linux.

Requirements:

  • IOMMU enabled (intel_iommu=on iommu=pt on the kernel command line)
  • vfio-pci kernel module loaded

Not suitable for VMs without nested IOMMU.

Throughput limits

The whole device shares a packet-processing path with hardware ceilings that operators must size for. These come from Intel's own datasheets.

Small packets (<160 B)

Hardware ceiling for the whole device: ~37 Mpps, regardless of how many ports are active.

This bounds:

  • X710 and XL710 (4x10 GbE mode) when 3 or 4 ports are in use at 10 GbE
  • XXV710
  • XL710 in 1x40 GbE mode

Large packets (≥160 B)

  • XXV710 (2x25 GbE): total hardware ceiling ~96–97% of dual-port 25 GbE line rate per direction. Example: ~45.5 Gb/s per direction for IPv4 TCP packets >1518 B.

Caveats

  • Requires intel_iommu=on iommu=pt.
  • Device is invisible to Linux after vfio-pci bind. Use the dataplane CLI / vppctl for state inspection.
  • Firmware version matters for some PMD features. Match firmware to the DPDK version in use.