netdev - Re: [PATCH] drivers/net/tile/: on-chip network drivers for the tile architecture

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Message-ID: <4CD1CE62.9010307@tilera.com>
Date:	Wed, 3 Nov 2010 17:04:34 -0400
From:	Chris Metcalf <cmetcalf@...era.com>
To:	Eric Dumazet <eric.dumazet@...il.com>
CC:	Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@...tta.com>,
	<linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>, <netdev@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] drivers/net/tile/: on-chip network drivers for the tile
 architecture

On 11/3/2010 4:31 PM, Eric Dumazet wrote:
> Le mercredi 03 novembre 2010 à 15:39 -0400, Chris Metcalf a écrit 
>> Several uses of "*(volatile int *)ptr" in that file are intended as
>> performance hints.  A more obvious way to state this, for our compiler, is
>> to say "prefetch_L1(ptr)".  This generates essentially the same code, but
>> avoids the red flag for "volatile" and also reads more clearly, so it's a
>> good change.
>>
>> The other use is part of a very precise dance that involves detailed
>> knowledge of the Tile memory subsystem micro-architecture.  This doesn't
>> really belong in the network device driver code, so I've moved it to
>> <asm/cacheflush.h>, and cleaned it up, with detailed comments.  The use
>> here is that our network hardware's DMA engine can be used in a mode where
>> it reads directly from memory, in which case you must ensure that any
>> cached values have been flushed.
> This kind of things really must be discussed before using it in a
> network driver.
>
> Because, an skb can be built by one CPU, queued on a qdisc queue, with
> no particular "cached values have been flushed" ...
>
> It then can be dequeued by another CPU, and given to the device.
> What happens then ?

The particular usage here is in tile_net_tx_frags(), as you can see in the
patch.  The skb is at the very last stage of being egressed, so we flush
any dirty cache lines to memory before asking the hardware to transmit. 
This is pretty standard for hardware that is not coherent with the cache.

In fact, though, this is not the standard mode we run the driver in; it's
almost always used in the cache-coherent mode ("hash_default") where we are
reading the skb data out of the caches of the cores it is resident in.  The
"if (!hash_default)" clause here is only true for our first-generation
hardware (TILE64) or when using our current (TILEPro) hardware in a way
that is basically backwards-compatible with TILE64, typically for some kind
of cache-utilization benchmarking purpose.

As to your specific question, certainly during the time an skb is being set
up for egress, added to a qdisc queue, etc., we don't make any assumptions
about where or how the data is cached.

I'm happy to discuss specific details of how the driver works, but I
suspect it's the usual mix of boilerplate skb management, NAPI support,
etc., mixed in with specifics of how to set up shared memory queues for the
ingress and egress hardware (or "firmware" since some of this is handled by
a hypervisor layer on a dedicated core).

-- 
Chris Metcalf, Tilera Corp.
http://www.tilera.com

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