Message-ID: <20090717203546.GA31259@1wt.eu>
Date:	Fri, 17 Jul 2009 22:35:46 +0200
From:	Willy Tarreau <w@....eu>
To:	Bill Fink <billfink@...dspring.com>
Cc:	Jesper Dangaard Brouer <hawk@...x.dk>,
	"netdev@...r.kernel.org" <netdev@...r.kernel.org>,
	"David S. Miller" <davem@...emloft.net>,
	Robert Olsson <Robert.Olsson@...a.slu.se>,
	"Waskiewicz Jr, Peter P" <peter.p.waskiewicz.jr@...el.com>,
	"Ronciak, John" <john.ronciak@...el.com>,
	jesse.brandeburg@...el.com,
	Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@...tta.com>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: Achieved 10Gbit/s bidirectional routing

On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 11:38:27AM -0400, Bill Fink wrote:
> On Thu, 16 Jul 2009, Jesper Dangaard Brouer wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, 2009-07-15 at 23:22 -0400, Bill Fink wrote:
> > > On Wed, 15 Jul 2009, Jesper Dangaard Brouer wrote:
> > > 
> > > > I'm giving a talk at LinuxCon, about 10Gbit/s routing on standard
> > > > hardware running Linux.
> > > > 
> > > >   http://linuxcon.linuxfoundation.org/meetings/1585
> > > >   https://events.linuxfoundation.org/lc09o17
> > > > 
> > > > I'm getting some really good 10Gbit/s bidirectional routing results
> > > > with Intels latest 82599 chip. (I got two pre-release engineering
> > > > samples directly from Intel, thanks Peter)
> > > > 
> > > > Using a Core i7-920, and tuning the memory according to the RAMs
> > > > X.M.P. settings DDR3-1600MHz, notice this also increases the QPI to
> > > > 6.4GT/s.  (Motherboard P6T6 WS revolution)
> > > > 
> > > > With big 1514 bytes packets, I can basically do 10Gbit/s wirespeed
> > > > bidirectional routing.
> > > > 
> > > > Notice bidirectional routing means that we actually has to move approx
> > > > 40Gbit/s through memory and in-and-out of the interfaces.
> > > > 
> > > > Formatted quick view using 'ifstat -b'
> > > > 
> > > >   eth31-in   eth31-out   eth32-in  eth32-out
> > > >     9.57  +    9.52  +     9.51 +     9.60  = 38.20 Gbit/s
> > > >     9.60  +    9.55  +     9.52 +     9.62  = 38.29 Gbit/s
> > > >     9.61  +    9.53  +     9.52 +     9.62  = 38.28 Gbit/s
> > > >     9.61  +    9.53  +     9.54 +     9.62  = 38.30 Gbit/s
> > > > 
> > > > [Adding an extra NIC]
> > > > 
> > > > Another observation is that I'm hitting some kind of bottleneck on the
> > > > PCI-express switch.  Adding an extra NIC in a PCIe slot connected to
> > > > the same PCIe switch, does not scale beyond 40Gbit/s collective
> > > > throughput.
> > 
> > Correcting my self, according to Bill's info below.
> > 
> > It does not scale when adding an extra NIC to the same NVIDIA NF200 PCIe
> > switch chip (reason explained below by Bill)
> > 
> >  
> > > > But, I happened to have a special motherboard ASUS P6T6 WS revolution,
> > > > which has an additional PCIe switch chip NVIDIA's NF200.
> > > > 
> > > > Connecting two dual port 10GbE NICs via two different PCI-express
> > > > switch chips, makes things scale again!  I have achieved a collective
> > > > throughput of 66.25 Gbit/s.  This results is also influenced by my
> > > > pktgen machines cannot keep up, and I'm getting closer to the memory
> > > > bandwidth limits.
> > > > 
> > > > FYI: I found a really good reference explaining the PCI-express
> > > > architecture, written by Intel:
> > > > 
> > > >  http://download.intel.com/design/intarch/papers/321071.pdf
> > > > 
> > > > I'm not sure how to explain the PCI-express chip bottleneck I'm
> > > > seeing, but my guess is that I'm limited by the number of outstanding
> > > > packets/DMA-transfers and the latency for the DMA operations.
> > > > 
> > > > Does any one have datasheets on the X58 and NVIDIA's NF200 PCI-express
> > > > chips, that can tell me the number of outstanding transfers they
> > > > support?
> > > 
> > > We've achieved 70 Gbps aggregate unidirectional TCP performance from
> > > one P6T6 based system to another.  We figured out in our case that
> > > we were being limited by the interconnect between the Intel X58 and
> > > Nvidia N200 chips.  The first 2 PCIe 2.0 slots are directly off the
> > > Intel X58 and get the full 40 Gbps throughput from the dual-port
> > > Myricom 10-GigE NICs we have installed in them.  But the other
> > > 3 PCIe 2.0 slots are on the Nvidia N200 chip, and I discovered
> > > through googling that the link between the X58 and N200 chips
> > > only operates at PCIe x16 _1.0_ speed, which limits the possible
> > > aggregate throughput of the last 3 PCIe 2.0 slots to only 32 Gbps.
> > 
> > This definitly explains the bottlenecks I have seen! Thanks!
> > 
> > Yes, it seems to scale when installing the two NICs in the first two
> > slots, both connected to the X58.  If overclocking the RAM and CPU a
> > bit, I can match my pktgen machines speed which gives a collective
> > throughput of 67.95 Gbit/s.
> > 
> >    eth33          eth34          eth31         eth32
> >  in     out     in     out     in    out     in    out 
> > 7.54 + 9.58  + 9.56 + 7.56  + 7.33 + 9.53 + 9.50 + 7.35  = 67.95 Gbit/s
> > 
> > Now I just need a faster generator machine, to find the next bottleneck ;-)
> > 
> > 
> > > This was clearly seen in our nuttcp testing:
> > > 
> > > [root@...aid-1 ~]# ./nuttcp-6.2.6 -In2 -xc0/0 -p5001 192.168.1.11 & ./nuttcp-6.2.6 -In3 -xc0/0 -p5002 192.168.2.11 & ./nuttcp-6.2.6 -In4 -xc1/1 -p5003 192.168.3.11 & ./nuttcp-6.2.6 -In5 -xc1/1 -p5004 192.168.4.11 & ./nuttcp-6.2.6 -In6 -xc2/2 -p5005 192.168.5.11 & ./nuttcp-6.2.6 -In7 -xc2/2 -p5006 192.168.6.11 & ./nuttcp-6.2.6 -In8 -xc3/3 -p5007 192.168.7.11 & ./nuttcp-6.2.6 -In9 -xc3/3 -p5008 192.168.8.11
> > > n2: 11505.2648 MB /  10.09 sec = 9566.2298 Mbps 37 %TX 55 %RX 0 retrans 0.10 msRTT
> > > n3: 11727.4489 MB /  10.02 sec = 9815.7570 Mbps 39 %TX 44 %RX 0 retrans 0.10 msRTT
> > > n4: 11770.1250 MB /  10.07 sec = 9803.9901 Mbps 39 %TX 51 %RX 0 retrans 0.10 msRTT
> > > n5: 11837.9320 MB /  10.05 sec = 9876.5725 Mbps 39 %TX 47 %RX 0 retrans 0.10 msRTT
> > > n6:  9096.8125 MB /  10.09 sec = 7559.3310 Mbps 30 %TX 32 %RX 0 retrans 0.10 msRTT
> > > n7:  9100.1211 MB /  10.10 sec = 7559.7790 Mbps 30 %TX 44 %RX 0 retrans 0.10 msRTT
> > > n8:  9095.6179 MB /  10.10 sec = 7557.9983 Mbps 31 %TX 33 %RX 0 retrans 0.10 msRTT
> > > n9:  9075.5472 MB /  10.08 sec = 7551.0234 Mbps 31 %TX 33 %RX 0 retrans 0.11 msRTT
> > > 
> > > This used 4 dual-port Myricom 10-GigE NICs.  We also tested with
> > > a fifth dual-port 10-GigE NIC, but the aggregate throughput stayed
> > > at about 70 Gbps, due to the performance bottleneck between the
> > > X58 and N200 chips.
> > 
> > This is also very excellent results!
> > 
> > Thanks a lot Bill !!!
> 
> We also achieved nearly 80 Gbps in bidirectional TCP tests (40 Gbps
> simultaneously in each direction):
> 
> [root@...aid-1 ~]# ./nuttcp-6.2.6 -In2 -xc0/0 -p5001 192.168.1.11 & ./nuttcp-6.2.6 -In3 -r -xc0/0 -p5002 192.168.2.11 & ./nuttcp-6.2.6 -In4 -xc1/1 -p5003 192.168.3.11 & ./nuttcp-6.2.6 -In5 -r -xc1/1 -p5004 192.168.4.11 & ./nuttcp-6.2.6 -In6 -xc2/2 -p5005 192.168.5.11 & ./nuttcp-6.2.6 -In7 -r -xc2/2 -p5006 192.168.6.11 & ./nuttcp-6.2.6 -In8 -xc3/3 -p5007 192.168.7.11 & ./nuttcp-6.2.6 -In9 -r -xc3/3 -p5008 192.168.8.11                                    
> n2: 11542.6250 MB /  10.07 sec = 9619.9920 Mbps 44 %TX 51 %RX 0 retrans 0.12 msRTT                                                                      
> n3: 11543.7143 MB /  10.06 sec = 9622.2153 Mbps 41 %TX 49 %RX 0 retrans 0.15 msRTT                                                   
> n4: 11622.8125 MB /  10.05 sec = 9701.0296 Mbps 43 %TX 51 %RX 0 retrans 0.10 msRTT                                                                      
> n5: 11523.6875 MB /  10.03 sec = 9638.8883 Mbps 43 %TX 50 %RX 0 retrans 0.15 msRTT                                                                      
> n6: 11608.0141 MB /  10.04 sec = 9695.7388 Mbps 43 %TX 50 %RX 0 retrans 0.10 msRTT                                                                      
> n7: 11580.1250 MB /  10.04 sec = 9679.3910 Mbps 43 %TX 50 %RX 0 retrans 0.13 msRTT                                                                      
> n8: 11608.0000 MB /  10.06 sec = 9678.7596 Mbps 42 %TX 50 %RX 0 retrans 0.10 msRTT                                                                      
> n9: 11553.3750 MB /  10.05 sec = 9643.7296 Mbps 45 %TX 50 %RX 0 retrans 0.11 msRTT                                                                      
> 
> This was using 2 dual-port 10-GigE NICs in the first two PCIe 2.0 slots.
> We are using an Intel i7 965 quad-core 3.2 GHz Nehalem processor
> (overclocked to 3.4 GHz) and 2000 MHz DDR3 memory.  Adding an additional
> dual-port 10-GigE NIC on the Nvidia N200 chip does only marginally
> better, as it appears we are basically CPU limited at this point for
> this test (the sum of the TX and RX CPU utilization for each pair of
> 10-GigE interfaces is about 93%).

Hey guys, those are really nice numbers. Since TCP splicing appeared in the
kernel (once we got it fixed), I achieved 10 Gbps of HTTP proxying using
haproxy with very low CPU usage (about 20% of a Core2Duo 2.66 GHz).

Before buying the machines, I had been wandering around with the NICs
donated by Myricom in order to try to find a machine capable of supporting
this. My conclusion was that a lot of machines had difficulties getting
above 3.5, 4.7 and 6.5 Gbps of output traffic (those 3 numbers were always
the same, depending on the chipsets). There clearly was a bandwidth
limitation imposed by the chipset.

So I waited for the X38 and AM780FX chipsets to become available and
bought 3 machines (1 C2D, 1 AMD X2, 1 AMD X4). Those ones have no problem
with 10 Gbps of forwarded traffic (20 Gbps of total bus bandwidth), even
with 1500 bytes frames, but I don't know how high they can go, maybe
they will saturate slightly above.

Unfortunately, I only have 5 NICs in 3 machines and no switch (and CX4
is hard to find these days), so I'm probably stuck at 10 Gbps max.

Interestingly, I had the impression that forwarding data with TCP
splicing costs less CPU than IP forwarding, because the NICs can do
LRO.

Also, I know a french service provider who uses haproxy on Core i7
machines and who has already reached 5 Gbps of sustained traffic
with recent intel dual-port NICs (though I'm not sure exactly which
ones). This is with very little CPU usage too, less than 2-3% user
and 15% system+softirq. On previous machines (quad core xeons), it
was impossible to go beyond 3 Gbps, it looked like the chipset was
the limitating factor too (though I don't precisely remember which
one it was).

I really blamed the NICs because this guys machine was about 4 times
more powerful than mine, but apparently it was just a chipset issue.

I also happen to have a customer who recently received a few Sun NXGE,
mounted in Sun x2100-m2 using an nvidia chipset which I tested OK at
10 Gbps with my myri10GE NICs. I'll try to see if I can run some tests
there, as Davem once said those NICs are really good too.

All in all, I find it really cool that our beloved OS scales that
well with the hardware :-)

Regards,
Willy

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