NAME

nfe —

NVIDIA nForce MCP Ethernet driver

SYNOPSIS

To compile this driver into the kernel, place the following lines in your kernel configuration file:

device miibus
device nfe

Alternatively, to load the driver as a module at boot time, place the following line in loader.conf(5):

if_nfe_load="YES"

DESCRIPTION

The nfe driver supports PCI Ethernet adapters based on the NVIDIA nForce Media and Communications Processors (MCP), such as the nForce, nForce 2, nForce 3, CK804, MCP04, MCP51, MCP55, MCP61, MCP65, MCP67, MCP73, MCP77 and MCP79 Ethernet controller chips.

Supported features include (hardware support provided):

Receive/Transmit IP/TCP/UDP checksum offload
Hardware VLAN tag insertion/stripping
TCP segmentation offload (TSO)
MSI/MSI-X
Jumbo Frames

Support for Jumbo Frames is provided via the interface MTU setting. Selecting an MTU larger than 1500 bytes with the ifconfig(8) utility configures the adapter to receive and transmit Jumbo Frames.

The nfe driver supports the following media types:

autoselect: Enable autoselection of the media type and options.
10baseT/UTP: Set 10Mbps operation.
100baseTX: Set 100Mbps (Fast Ethernet) operation.
1000baseT: Set 1000Mbps (Gigabit Ethernet) operation (recent models only).

The nfe driver supports the following media options:

half-duplex: Force half duplex operation.
full-duplex: Force full duplex operation.

For more information on configuring this device, see ifconfig(8).

HARDWARE

The nfe driver supports the following NVIDIA MCP onboard adapters:

NVIDIA nForce MCP Networking Adapter
NVIDIA nForce MCP04 Networking Adapter
NVIDIA nForce 430 MCP12 Networking Adapter
NVIDIA nForce 430 MCP13 Networking Adapter
NVIDIA nForce MCP51 Networking Adapter
NVIDIA nForce MCP55 Networking Adapter
NVIDIA nForce MCP61 Networking Adapter
NVIDIA nForce MCP65 Networking Adapter
NVIDIA nForce MCP67 Networking Adapter
NVIDIA nForce MCP73 Networking Adapter
NVIDIA nForce MCP77 Networking Adapter
NVIDIA nForce MCP79 Networking Adapter
NVIDIA nForce2 MCP2 Networking Adapter
NVIDIA nForce2 400 MCP4 Networking Adapter
NVIDIA nForce2 400 MCP5 Networking Adapter
NVIDIA nForce3 MCP3 Networking Adapter
NVIDIA nForce3 250 MCP6 Networking Adapter
NVIDIA nForce3 MCP7 Networking Adapter
NVIDIA nForce4 CK804 MCP8 Networking Adapter
NVIDIA nForce4 CK804 MCP9 Networking Adapter

LOADER TUNABLES

Tunables can be set at the loader(8) prompt before booting the kernel or stored in loader.conf(5).

hw.nfe.msi_disable: Whether or not MSI support is enabled in the driver. The default value is 0.
hw.nfe.msix_disable: Whether or not MSI-X support is enabled in the driver. The default value is 0.

SYSCTL VARIABLES

The following sysctl(8) variables can be used to modify or monitor nfe behavior.

dev.nfe.%d.process_limit: Maximum number of Rx events to be processed in the event loop before rescheduling a taskqueue. The accepted range is 50 to 255, the default value is 192. The interface does not need to be brought down and up again before a change takes effect.

HISTORY

The nfe device driver first appeared in OpenBSD 3.9, and then in FreeBSD 7.0.

AUTHORS

The nfe driver was written by Jonathan Gray <jsg@openbsd.org> and Damien Bergamini <damien@openbsd.org>. The nfe driver was ported to FreeBSD by Shigeaki Tagashira <shigeaki@se.hiroshima-u.ac.jp>.