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Message-Id: <20100719.203119.106787548.davem@davemloft.net>
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2010 20:31:19 -0700 (PDT)
From: David Miller <davem@...emloft.net>
To: mchan@...adcom.com
Cc: netdev@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH net-next 3/4] bnx2: Remove some unnecessary smp_mb() in
tx fast path.
From: "Michael Chan" <mchan@...adcom.com>
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2010 17:15:04 -0700
> smp_mb() inside bnx2_tx_avail() is used twice in the normal
> bnx2_start_xmit() path (see illustration below). The full memory
> barrier is only necessary during race conditions with tx completion.
> We can speed up the tx path by replacing smp_mb() in bnx2_tx_avail()
> with a compiler barrier. The compiler barrier is to force the
> compiler to fetch the tx_prod and tx_cons from memory.
>
> In the race condition between bnx2_start_xmit() and bnx2_tx_int(),
> we have the following situation:
>
> bnx2_start_xmit() bnx2_tx_int()
> if (!bnx2_tx_avail())
> BUG();
>
> ...
>
> if (!bnx2_tx_avail())
> netif_tx_stop_queue(); update_tx_index();
> smp_mb(); smp_mb();
> if (bnx2_tx_avail()) if (netif_tx_queue_stopped() &&
> netif_tx_wake_queue(); bnx2_tx_avail())
>
> With smp_mb() removed from bnx2_tx_avail(), we need to add smp_mb() to
> bnx2_start_xmit() as shown above to properly order netif_tx_stop_queue()
> and bnx2_tx_avail() to check the ring index. If it is not strictly
> ordered, the tx queue can be stopped forever.
>
> This improves performance by about 5% with 2 ports running bi-directional
> 64-byte packets.
>
> Reviewed-by: Benjamin Li <benli@...adcom.com>
> Reviewed-by: Matt Carlson <mcarlson@...adcom.com>
> Signed-off-by: Michael Chan <mchan@...adcom.com>
Applied.
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