From: Eric Dumazet <dada1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 19 Mar 2009 06:49:19 +0100
> Still, there is room for improvements, since :
>
> 1) default qdisc is pfifo_fast. This beast uses three sk_buff_head (96 bytes)
> where it could use 3 smaller list_head (3 * 16 = 48 bytes on x86_64)
>
> (assuming sizeof(spinlock_t) is only 4 bytes, but it's more than that
> on various situations (LOCKDEP, ...)
I already plan on doing this, skb->{next,prev} will be replaced with a
list_head and nearly all of the sk_buff_head usage will simply
disappear. It's a lot of work because every piece of SKB queue
handling code has to be sanitized to only use the interfaces in
linux/skbuff.h and lots of extremely ugly code like the PPP
defragmenter make many non-trivial direct skb->{next,prev}
manipulations.
> 2) struct Qdisc layout could be better, letting read mostly fields
> at beginning of structure. (ie move 'dev_queue', 'next_sched', reshape_fail,
> u32_node, __parent, ...)
I have no problem with your struct layout changes, submit it formally.
> 3) In stress situation a CPU A queues a skb to a sk_buff_head, but a CPU B
> dequeues it to feed device, involving an expensive cache line miss
> on the skb.{next|prev} (to set them to NULL)
>
> We could:
> Use a special dequeue op that doesnt touch skb.{next|prev}
> Eventually set next/prev to NULL after q.lock is released
You absolutely can't do this, as it would break GSO/GRO. The whole
transmit path is littered with checks of skb->next being NULL for the
purposes of segmentation handling.
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