Netronome/Corigine Agilio NFP NIC personality
The basic Ethernet NIC mode for Netronome (now Corigine) Agilio SmartNICs built on the NFP4000, NFP5000, and NFP6000 network processors, including DCB (data center bridging) support. These PCIe SmartNICs are deployed in data centers and telco networks for accelerated packet processing, with the plain-NIC personality used when offloads like eBPF or OVS aren't in play.
recommendation
Worth keeping but documenting its niche. This is the plain-NIC personality of the Netronome (now Corigine) Agilio SmartNIC family, which is still sold new in 2025 via Corigine's NFP-4000-based Agilio FX line. In-tree activity is low, but there is no replacement driver covering the same hardware, and no upstream removal discussion has surfaced, so it should remain available for the smaller installed base that depends on it.
repository signals
sources
- corigine.com
Corigine still markets Agilio FX SmartNIC hardware with NFP-4000 and a BUY NOW path, so the hardware family was still sold new after 2025.
- cateee.net
CONFIG_NFP remains present through current kernel series and covers Netronome/Corigine NFP4000/NFP6000 NIC hardware.
- kernel.org
Kernel documentation describes the NFP4000/NFP5000/NFP6000 family and notes SR-IOV PF/VF support and Agilio SmartNIC branding.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Real driver subdirectory under the active nfp PCI NIC driver, not a helper-only tree. Local `exec_command` inspection showed `main.c`/`dcb.c` implement NIC-app/DCB behavior for the nfp driver; local `git -c safe.directory=... log -- drivers/net/ethernet/netronome/nfp/nic` showed only 3 substantive path touches since 2023 and no sign of an in-tree removal trend. A web search for lore removal traffic returned no usable lore hits, so I treated removal discussion as absent rather than proven absent. URLs were obtained via `web.search_query` then `web.open`/`web.find`: Corigine product page for current sale evidence, LKDDb for ongoing kernel presence, and kernel.org docs for supported hardware scope. Low activity plus niche SmartNIC deployment argues annotation rather than deprecation; there is no natural upstream replacement for the same hardware family.