netdev - Re: Softirq priority inversion from "softirq: reduce latencies"

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Date:	Mon, 29 Feb 2016 07:27:23 -0800
From:	Eric Dumazet <eric.dumazet@...il.com>
To:	Peter Hurley <peter@...leysoftware.com>
Cc:	Mike Galbraith <umgwanakikbuti@...il.com>,
	Francois Romieu <romieu@...zoreil.com>,
	Eric Dumazet <edumazet@...gle.com>,
	David Miller <davem@...emloft.net>, netdev@...r.kernel.org,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, Greg KH <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>,
	dmaengine@...r.kernel.org, John Ogness <john.ogness@...utronix.de>,
	Sebastian Andrzej Siewior <bigeasy@...utronix.de>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>
Subject: Re: Softirq priority inversion from "softirq: reduce latencies"

On lun., 2016-02-29 at 07:03 -0800, Peter Hurley wrote:

> The reason why Eric's change is so effective for Eric's workload is
> that it fixes the problem where NET_RX keeps getting new network packets
> so it keeps looping, servicing more NET_RX softirq.

You have very little idea of what is happening in networking land.

Once hard irq for RX has triggered, we arm a NAPI (NET_RX softirq), and
no more irq will come unless the napi handler ran. Then when NAPI is
complete, we re-allow interrupt to be delivered when a new packet is
coming.

Yes, ksoftirqd runs under load, and this is _wanted_.

Sure, it might add a latency if some high prio task is wanting the same
cpu, but this is exactly the purpose of having multi tasking.