linux-kernel - Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: [PATCH v2 0/6] Add support for Texas Instruments MCRC64 engine

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Date:   Mon, 21 Aug 2023 22:17:10 -0700
From:   Eric Biggers <ebiggers@...nel.org>
To:     Kamlesh Gurudasani <kamlesh@...com>
Cc:     Herbert Xu <herbert@...dor.apana.org.au>,
        "David S. Miller" <davem@...emloft.net>,
        Rob Herring <robh+dt@...nel.org>,
        Krzysztof Kozlowski <krzysztof.kozlowski+dt@...aro.org>,
        Conor Dooley <conor+dt@...nel.org>, Nishanth Menon <nm@...com>,
        Vignesh Raghavendra <vigneshr@...com>,
        Tero Kristo <kristo@...nel.org>,
        Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@....com>,
        Will Deacon <will@...nel.org>,
        Maxime Coquelin <mcoquelin.stm32@...il.com>,
        Alexandre Torgue <alexandre.torgue@...s.st.com>,
        linux-crypto@...r.kernel.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        devicetree@...r.kernel.org, linux-arm-kernel@...ts.infradead.org,
        linux-stm32@...md-mailman.stormreply.com
Subject: Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: [PATCH v2 0/6] Add support for Texas Instruments
 MCRC64 engine

On Fri, Aug 18, 2023 at 02:36:34PM +0530, Kamlesh Gurudasani wrote:
> Hi Eric,
> 
> We are more interested in offload than performance, with splice system
> call and DMA mode in driver(will be implemented after this series gets
> merged), good amount of cpu cycles will be saved.

So it's for power usage, then?  Or freeing up CPU for other tasks?

> There is one more mode(auto mode) in mcrc64 which helps to verify crc64
> values against pre calculated crc64, saving the efforts of comparing in
> userspace.

Is there any path forward to actually support this?

> 
> Current generic implementation of crc64-iso(part of this series)
> gives 173 Mb/s of speed as opposed to mcrc64 which gives speed of 812
> Mb/s when tested with tcrypt.

This doesn't answer my question, which to reiterate was:

    How does performance compare to a properly optimized software CRC
    implementation on your platform, i.e. an implementation using carryless
    multiplication instructions (e.g. ARMv8 CE) if available on your platform,
    otherwise an implementation using the slice-by-8 or slice-by-16 method?

The implementation you tested was slice-by-1.  Compared to that, it's common for
slice-by-8 to speed up CRCs by about 4 times and for folding with carryless
multiplication to speed up CRCs by 10-30 times, sometimes limited only by memory
bandwidth.  I don't know what specific results you would get on your specific
CPU and for this specific CRC, and you could certainly see something different
if you e.g. have some low-end embedded CPU.  But those are the typical results
I've seen for other CRCs on different CPUs.  So, a software implementation may
be more attractive than you realize.  It could very well be the case that a
PMULL based CRC implementation actually ends up with less CPU load than your
"hardware offload", when taking into syscall, algif_hash, and driver overhead...

- Eric