linux-kernel - [PATCH v2] vhost: cache avail index in vhost_enable

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Date:   Fri, 21 Jan 2022 16:31:08 +0100
From:   Stefano Garzarella <sgarzare@...hat.com>
To:     virtualization@...ts.linux-foundation.org
Cc:     kvm@...r.kernel.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        "Michael S. Tsirkin" <mst@...hat.com>,
        Jason Wang <jasowang@...hat.com>, netdev@...r.kernel.org
Subject: [PATCH v2] vhost: cache avail index in vhost_enable_notify()

In vhost_enable_notify() we enable the notifications and we read
the avail index to check if new buffers have become available in
the meantime.

We are not caching the avail index, so when the device will call
vhost_get_vq_desc(), it will find the old value in the cache and
it will read the avail index again.

It would be better to refresh the cache every time we read avail
index, so let's change vhost_enable_notify() caching the value in
`avail_idx` and compare it with `last_avail_idx` to check if there
are new buffers available.

We don't expect a significant performance boost because
the above path is not very common, indeed vhost_enable_notify()
is often called with unlikely(), expecting that avail index has
not been updated.

We ran virtio-test/vhost-test and noticed minimal improvement as
expected. To stress the patch more, we modified vhost_test.ko to
call vhost_enable_notify()/vhost_disable_notify() on every cycle
when calling vhost_get_vq_desc(); in this case we observed a more
evident improvement, with a reduction of the test execution time
of about 3.7%.

Signed-off-by: Stefano Garzarella <sgarzare@...hat.com>
---
v2
- added performance info in the commit description [MST]
---
 drivers/vhost/vhost.c | 3 ++-
 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/drivers/vhost/vhost.c b/drivers/vhost/vhost.c
index 59edb5a1ffe2..07363dff559e 100644
--- a/drivers/vhost/vhost.c
+++ b/drivers/vhost/vhost.c
@@ -2543,8 +2543,9 @@ bool vhost_enable_notify(struct vhost_dev *dev, struct vhost_virtqueue *vq)
 		       &vq->avail->idx, r);
 		return false;
 	}
+	vq->avail_idx = vhost16_to_cpu(vq, avail_idx);

-	return vhost16_to_cpu(vq, avail_idx) != vq->avail_idx;
+	return vq->avail_idx != vq->last_avail_idx;
 }
 EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(vhost_enable_notify);

-- 
2.31.1