netdev - Re: [PATCH 05/10] net: move destructor_arg to the front of sk

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Date:	Wed, 11 Apr 2012 18:00:56 +0100
From:	Ian Campbell <Ian.Campbell@...rix.com>
To:	Alexander Duyck <alexander.h.duyck@...el.com>
CC:	Eric Dumazet <eric.dumazet@...il.com>,
	"netdev@...r.kernel.org" <netdev@...r.kernel.org>,
	David Miller <davem@...emloft.net>,
	"Michael S. Tsirkin" <mst@...hat.com>,
	"Wei Liu (Intern)" <wei.liu2@...rix.com>,
	"xen-devel@...ts.xen.org" <xen-devel@...ts.xen.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 05/10] net: move destructor_arg to the front of sk_buff.

On Wed, 2012-04-11 at 17:31 +0100, Alexander Duyck wrote:
> On 04/11/2012 01:00 AM, Ian Campbell wrote:
> > On Tue, 2012-04-10 at 20:15 +0100, Alexander Duyck wrote:
> >> On 04/10/2012 11:41 AM, Eric Dumazet wrote:
> >>> On Tue, 2012-04-10 at 11:33 -0700, Alexander Duyck wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Have you checked this for 32 bit as well as 64?  Based on my math your
> >>>> next patch will still mess up the memset on 32 bit with the structure
> >>>> being split somewhere just in front of hwtstamps.
> >>>>
> >>>> Why not just take frags and move it to the start of the structure?  It
> >>>> is already an unknown value because it can be either 16 or 17 depending
> >>>> on the value of PAGE_SIZE, and since you are making changes to frags the
> >>>> changes wouldn't impact the alignment of the other values later on since
> >>>> you are aligning the end of the structure.  That way you would be
> >>>> guaranteed that all of the fields that will be memset would be in the
> >>>> last 64 bytes.
> >>>>
> >>> Now when a fragmented packet is copied in pskb_expand_head(), you access
> >>> two separate zones of memory to copy the shinfo. But its supposed to be
> >>> slow path.
> >>>
> >>> Problem with this is that the offsets of often used fields will be big
> >>> (instead of being < 127) and code will be bigger on x86.
> >> Actually now that I think about it my concerns go much further than the
> >> memset.  I'm convinced that this is going to cause a pretty significant
> >> performance regression on multiple drivers, especially on non x86_64
> >> architecture.  What we have right now on most platforms is a
> >> skb_shared_info structure in which everything up to and including frag 0
> >> is all in one cache line.  This gives us pretty good performance for igb
> >> and ixgbe since that is our common case when jumbo frames are not
> >> enabled is to split the head and place the data in a page.
> > With all the changes in this series it is still possible to fit a
> > maximum standard MTU frame and the shinfo on the same 4K page while also
> > have the skb_shared_info up to and including frag [0] aligned to the
> > same 64 byte cache line. 
> >
> > The only exception is destructor_arg on 64 bit which is on the preceding
> > cache line but that is not a field used in any hot path.
> The problem I have is that this is only true on x86_64.  Proper work
> hasn't been done to guarantee this on any other architectures.

FWIW I did also explicitly cover i386 (see
<1334130984.12209.195.camel@...on.hellion.org.uk>)

> I think what I would like to see is instead of just setting things up
> and hoping it comes out cache aligned on nr_frags why not take steps to
> guarantee it?  You could do something like place and size the structure
> based on:
> SKB_DATA_ALIGN(sizeof(skb_shared_info) - offsetof(struct
> skb_shared_info, nr_frags)) + offsetof(struct skb_shared_info, nr_frags)
> 
> That way you would have your alignment still guaranteed based off of the
> end of the structure, but anything placed before nr_frags would be
> placed on the end of the previous cache line.
> 
> >> However the change being recommend here only resolves the issue for one
> >> specific architecture, and that is what I don't agree with.  What we
> >> need is a solution that also works for 64K pages or 32 bit pointers and
> >> I am fairly certain this current solution does not.
> > I think it does work for 32 bit pointers. What issue to do you see with
> > 64K pages?
> >
> > Ian.
> With 64K pages the MAX_SKB_FRAGS value drops from 17 to 16.  That will
> undoubtedly mess up the alignment.

Oh, I see. Need to think about this some more but your suggestion above
is an interesting one, I'll see what I can do with that.

Ian.


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