The Intel(R) Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK)

The Intel DPDK is a set of software libraries to enable packet processing. It
consists of a set of polling mode drivers (PMD) which can be used to pull
network packets directly from a Network Interface Card (NIC), as well as
other libraries to assist in the processing of those packets. The additional
libraries include ones for:
* memory and buffer management
* packet classification
* software rings or FIFOs to allow packet transfer between cores
amongst others.

Applications written using the DPDK run in userspace. The devices used by an
Intel DPDK application are removed from kernel control and are instead managed
directly by that application.