netdev - Re: [PATCH 0/9 Rev3] Implement batching skb API and support in IPoIB

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Date:	Wed, 08 Aug 2007 11:14:35 -0400
From:	jamal <hadi@...erus.ca>
To:	Herbert Xu <herbert@...dor.apana.org.au>
Cc:	David Miller <davem@...emloft.net>, krkumar2@...ibm.com,
	johnpol@....mipt.ru, sri@...ibm.com,
	shemminger@...ux-foundation.org, kaber@...sh.net,
	jagana@...ibm.com, Robert.Olsson@...a.slu.se, rick.jones2@...com,
	gaagaan@...il.com, kumarkr@...ux.ibm.com, rdreier@...co.com,
	peter.p.waskiewicz.jr@...el.com, mcarlson@...adcom.com,
	jeff@...zik.org, general@...ts.openfabrics.org, mchan@...adcom.com,
	tgraf@...g.ch, netdev@...r.kernel.org, xma@...ibm.com
Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/9 Rev3] Implement batching skb API and support in
	IPoIB

On Wed, 2007-08-08 at 21:42 +0800, Herbert Xu wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 08, 2007 at 03:49:00AM -0700, David Miller wrote:
> > 
> > Not because I think it obviates your work, but rather because I'm
> > curious, could you test a TSO-in-hardware driver converted to
> > batching and see how TSO alone compares to batching for a pure
> > TCP workload?
> 
> You could even lower the bar by disabling TSO and enabling
> software GSO.

>>From my observation for TCP packets slightly above MDU (upto 2K), GSO
gives worse performance than non-GSO throughput-wise. Actually this has
nothing to do with batching, rather the behavior is consistent with or
without batching changes. 

> > I personally don't think it will help for that case at all as
> > TSO likely does better job of coalescing the work _and_ reducing
> > bus traffic as well as work in the TCP stack.
> 
> I agree.
> I suspect the bulk of the effort is in getting
> these skb's created and processed by the stack so that by
> the time that they're exiting the qdisc there's not much
> to be saved anymore.

pktgen shows a clear win if you test the driver path - which is what you
should test because thats where the batching changes are. 
Using TCP or UDP adds other variables[1] that need to be isolated first
in order to quantify the effect of batching. 
For throughput and CPU utilization, the benefit will be clear when there
are a lot more flows. 

cheers,
jamal

[1] I think there are too many other variables in play unfortunately
when you are dealing with a path that starts above the driver and one
that covers end to end effect:  traffic/app source, system clock sources
as per my recent discovery, congestion control algorithms used, tuning
of recevier etc.

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