Queued up into the networking subsystem's "net-next" branch last week ahead of the Linux 6.14 kernel cycle is AF_XDP zero-copy support for the common Intel Gigabit Ethernet "IGB" driver. With this the AF_XDP performance improvements can be quite dramatic in leveraging this zero-copy path.

Other Intel networking drivers have already been making use of zero-copy support within the AF_XDP high performance packet processing code for years. [1]The Intel IGC gains were quite significant while now the support is coming to the Intel IGB wired networking driver. The IGB driver supports Intel Ethernet chipsets such as the 82575, 82576, 82580, I350, I354, and I210/I211.

On [2]the mailing list the Intel IGB AF_XDP zero-copy patches showed some very decisive benefits:

All of the IGB driver patches for both AF_XDP zero-copy Tx and Rx support have been [3]queued into net-next ahead of the Linux 6.14 merge window opening in the next week or two.

No surprise really but Linux 6.14 is looking to be another exciting kernel cycle.



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-5.14-AF-XDP-Zero-Copy-IGC

[2] https://lore.kernel.org/all/20250106221929.956999-1-anthony.l.nguyen@intel.com/

[3] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/net-next.git/commit/?id=f8e284a02afc9797d5f626fc7dfb6f7d381d4e77