netdev - Re: [openib-general] [PATCH v4 01/13] Linux RDMA Core Changes

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Message-Id: <1168006945.10259.17.camel@stevo-desktop>
Date:	Fri, 05 Jan 2007 08:22:25 -0600
From:	Steve Wise <swise@...ngridcomputing.com>
To:	Roland Dreier <rdreier@...co.com>
Cc:	"Michael S. Tsirkin" <mst@...lanox.co.il>, netdev@...r.kernel.org,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, openib-general@...nib.org
Subject: Re: [openib-general] [PATCH  v4 01/13] Linux RDMA Core Changes

On Thu, 2007-01-04 at 13:34 -0800, Roland Dreier wrote:
> OK, I'm back from vacation today.
> 
> Anyway I don't have a definitive statement on this right now.  I guess
> I agree that I don't like having an extra parameter to a function that
> should be pretty fast (although req notify isn't quite as hot as
> something like posting a send request or polling a cq), given that it
> adds measurable overhead.  (And I am surprised that the overhead is
> measurable, since 3 arguments still fit in registers, but OK).
> 
> I also agree that adding an extra entry point just to pass in the user
> data is ugly, and also racy.
> 
> Giving the kernel driver a pointer it can read seems OK I guess,
> although it's a little ugly to have a backdoor channel like that.
> 

Another alternative is for the cq-index u32 memory to be allocated by
the kernel and mapped into the user process.  So the lib can read/write
it, and the kernel can read it directly.  This is the fastest way
perfwise, but I didn't want to do it because of the page granularity of
mapping.  IE it would require a page of address space (and backing
memory I guess) just for 1 u32.  The CQ element array memory is already
allocated this way (and its DMA coherent too), but I didn't want to
overload that memory with this extra variable either.  Mapping just
seemed ugly and wasteful to me. 

So given 3 approaches:

1) allow user data to be passed into ib_req_notify_cq() via the standard
uverbs mechanisms.

2) hide this in the chelsio driver and have the driver copyin the info
directly.

3) allocate the memory for this in the kernel and map it to the user
process.

I chose 1 because it seemed the cleanest from an architecture point of
view and I didn't think it would impact performance much.

Steve.

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