Intel IFC VF vDPA driver for FPGA SmartNICs and IPUs
A virtio data path acceleration backend for Intel's FPGA-based SmartNIC and Infrastructure Processing Unit cards, including the FPGA PAC N3000 and the C5000X-PL and F2000X-PL IPU platforms. It lets these cards expose hardware-accelerated virtio queues to virtual machines, a niche feature mainly used by cloud providers and telco operators.
recommendation
Worth keeping but documenting its niche audience. Intel has discontinued the older N3000 card, but the C5000X-PL and F2000X-PL IPU platforms it supports are still sold new in 2025, and upstream maintenance on the driver has continued into 2026. Deployments are concentrated in cloud and telco infrastructure rather than general-purpose servers, so a note clarifying its narrow scope would help packagers and admins understand who actually needs it.
repository signals
sources
- lore.kernel.org
Recent upstream maintenance continued into 2026 for drivers/vdpa/ifcvf/ifcvf_main.c, indicating the driver is active rather than abandoned.
- intel.com
Intel lists the FPGA PAC N3000, one of the cards explicitly matched by the driver, as Discontinued.
- intel.com
Intel still markets the C5000X-PL IPU platform, which matches a device family named in the driver PCI ID table.
- intel.com
Intel still markets the F2000X-PL IPU platform, which matches a device family named in the driver PCI ID table.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Local shell inspection of drivers/vdpa/ifcvf/ifcvf_main.c identified supported devices as N3000, C5000X-PL, and F2000X-PL and described the module as an Intel IFC VF virtio dataplane offload driver. lore_file_timeline on ifcvf_main.c showed substantive patches through 2025-2026 and no evident removal trend, so this is not a stale candidate. Web search on intel.com found N3000 marked discontinued, but C5000X-PL and F2000X-PL product pages were still live as current offerings, so the family is still sold new in 2025, albeit in a narrow CSP/IPU niche. Because the hardware is niche and part of the supported set is already discontinued, but upstream support remains active and there is no clear in-tree replacement for the same Intel cards, keep with annotation is the best fit.