On Tue, Oct 14, 2014 at 02:53:27PM -0400, David Miller wrote: > From: Jason Wang <jasowang@xxxxxxxxxx> > Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2014 15:16:43 +0800 > > > We free old transmitted packets in ndo_start_xmit() currently, so any > > packet must be orphaned also there. This was used to reduce the overhead of > > tx interrupt to achieve better performance. But this may not work for some > > protocols such as TCP stream. TCP depends on the value of sk_wmem_alloc to > > implement various optimization for small packets stream such as TCP small > > queue and auto corking. But orphaning packets early in ndo_start_xmit() > > disable such things more or less since sk_wmem_alloc was not accurate. This > > lead extra low throughput for TCP stream of small writes. > > > > This series tries to solve this issue by enable tx interrupts for all TCP > > packets other than the ones with push bit or pure ACK. This is done through > > the support of urgent descriptor which can force an interrupt for a > > specified packet. If tx interrupt was enabled for a packet, there's no need > > to orphan it in ndo_start_xmit(), we can free it tx napi which is scheduled > > by tx interrupt. Then sk_wmem_alloc was more accurate than before and TCP > > can batch more for small write. More larger skb was produced by TCP in this > > case to improve both throughput and cpu utilization. > > > > Test shows great improvements on small write tcp streams. For most of the > > other cases, the throughput and cpu utilization are the same in the > > past. Only few cases, more cpu utilization was noticed which needs more > > investigation. > > > > Review and comments are welcomed. > > I think proper accounting and queueing (at all levels, not just TCP > sockets) is more important than trying to skim a bunch of cycles by > avoiding TX interrupts. > > Having an event to free the SKB is absolutely essential for the stack > to operate correctly. > > And with virtio-net you don't even have the excuse of "the HW > unfortunately doesn't have an appropriate TX event." > > So please don't play games, and instead use TX interrupts all the > time. You can mitigate them in various ways, but don't turn them on > selectively based upon traffic type, that's terrible. This got me thinking: how about using virtqueue_enable_cb_delayed for this mitigation? It's pretty easy to implement - I'll send a proof of concept patch separately. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-api" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
