Show HN: Out-of-tree Linux driver for a reverse-engineered Cavium 10GbE SmartNIC

Category: infrastructure

Tags: linux-kernel, reverse-engineering, pcie, nic-driver, octeon, smartnic

Score: 7.0/10 (Innovation: 8, Technical: 9, Documentation: 8, Utility: 3)

An out-of-tree Linux driver stack that reverse-engineers the Cavium CN6640-SNIC10E smartNIC to expose two independent 10 GbE interfaces over a re-programmed PCIe BAR2 shared-memory datapath. It boots the card with a RAM-loaded OpenWrt image and bypasses vendor firmware entirely, achieving line-rate TX. Impressive low-level kernel and PCIe work for a very narrow piece of legacy OEM hardware.

Target audience: kernel developers, network engineers, embedded Linux hackers, hardware reverse engineers

Repository: https://github.com/nicologiuliani6/cavium-cn6640-snic10e-octeon-ii-nic · C · GPL-2.0 · 51 stars

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