netdev - Re: [PATCH v3 net-next 08/14] mlx4: use order-0 pages for RX

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Date:   Sun, 12 Mar 2017 07:57:16 -0700
From:   Eric Dumazet <eric.dumazet@...il.com>
To:     Alexander Duyck <alexander.duyck@...il.com>
Cc:     Eric Dumazet <edumazet@...gle.com>,
        Alexander Duyck <alexander.h.duyck@...el.com>,
        "David S . Miller" <davem@...emloft.net>,
        netdev <netdev@...r.kernel.org>,
        Tariq Toukan <tariqt@...lanox.com>,
        Saeed Mahameed <saeedm@...lanox.com>,
        Willem de Bruijn <willemb@...gle.com>,
        Jesper Dangaard Brouer <brouer@...hat.com>,
        Brenden Blanco <bblanco@...mgrid.com>,
        Alexei Starovoitov <ast@...nel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 net-next 08/14] mlx4: use order-0 pages for RX

On Wed, 2017-02-22 at 18:06 -0800, Eric Dumazet wrote:
> On Wed, 2017-02-22 at 17:08 -0800, Alexander Duyck wrote:
> 
> > 
> > Right but you were talking about using both halves one after the
> > other.  If that occurs you have nothing left that you can reuse.  That
> > was what I was getting at.  If you use up both halves you end up
> > having to unmap the page.
> > 
> 
> You must have misunderstood me.
> 
> Once we use both halves of a page, we _keep_ the page, we do not unmap
> it.
> 
> We save the page pointer in a ring buffer of pages.
> Call it the 'quarantine'
> 
> When we _need_ to replenish the RX desc, we take a look at the oldest
> entry in the quarantine ring.
> 
> If page count is 1 (or pagecnt_bias if needed) -> we immediately reuse
> this saved page.
> 
> If not, _then_ we unmap and release the page.
> 
> Note that we would have received 4096 frames before looking at the page
> count, so there is high chance both halves were consumed.
> 
> To recap on x86 :
> 
> 2048 active pages would be visible by the device, because 4096 RX desc
> would contain dma addresses pointing to the 4096 halves.
> 
> And 2048 pages would be in the reserve.
> 
> 
> > The whole idea behind using only half the page per descriptor is to
> > allow us to loop through the ring before we end up reusing it again.
> > That buys us enough time that usually the stack has consumed the frame
> > before we need it again.
> 
> 
> The same will happen really.
> 
> Best maybe is for me to send the patch ;)

Excellent results so far, performance on PowerPC is back, and x86 gets a
gain as well.

Problem is XDP TX :

I do not see any guarantee mlx4_en_recycle_tx_desc() runs while the NAPI
RX is owned by current cpu.

Since TX completion is using a different NAPI, I really do not believe
we can avoid an atomic operation, like a spinlock, to protect the list
of pages ( ring->page_cache )