Date:   Tue, 8 Sep 2020 14:21:54 +0200
From:   Björn Töpel <bjorn.topel@...el.com>
To:     Magnus Karlsson <magnus.karlsson@...il.com>,
        Maxim Mikityanskiy <maximmi@...dia.com>
Cc:     Björn Töpel <bjorn.topel@...il.com>,
        Alexei Starovoitov <ast@...nel.org>,
        Daniel Borkmann <daniel@...earbox.net>,
        Network Development <netdev@...r.kernel.org>,
        bpf <bpf@...r.kernel.org>,
        Maxim Mikityanskiy <maximmi@...lanox.com>,
        "Karlsson, Magnus" <magnus.karlsson@...el.com>,
        "David S. Miller" <davem@...emloft.net>, kuba@...nel.org,
        hawk@...nel.org, John Fastabend <john.fastabend@...il.com>,
        intel-wired-lan <intel-wired-lan@...ts.osuosl.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH bpf-next 0/6] xsk: exit NAPI loop when AF_XDP Rx ring is
 full

On 2020-09-08 13:37, Magnus Karlsson wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 8, 2020 at 12:33 PM Maxim Mikityanskiy <maximmi@...dia.com> wrote:
>>
>> On 2020-09-04 16:59, Björn Töpel wrote:
>>> On 2020-09-04 15:53, Björn Töpel wrote:
>>>> This series addresses a problem that arises when AF_XDP zero-copy is
>>>> enabled, and the kernel softirq Rx processing and userland process
>>>> is running on the same core.
>>>>
>>> [...]
>>>>
>>>
>>> @Maxim I'm not well versed in Mellanox drivers. Would this be relevant
>>> to mlx5 as well?
>>
>> Thanks for letting me know about this series! So the basic idea is to
>> stop processing hardware completions if the RX ring gets full, because
>> the application didn't have chance to run? Yes, I think it's also
>> relevant to mlx5, the issue is not driver-specific, and a similar fix is
>> applicable. However, it may lead to completion queue overflows - some
>> analysis is needed to understand what happens then and how to handle it.
>>
>> Regarding the feature, I think it should be opt-in (disabled by
>> default), because old applications may not wakeup RX after they process
>> packets in the RX ring.
>

First of all; Max, thanks for some really good input as usual!


> How about need_wakeup enable/disable at bind time being that opt-in,
> instead of a new option? It is off by default, and when it is off, the
> driver busy-spins on the Rx ring until it can put an entry there. It
> will not yield to the application by returning something less than
> budget. Applications need not check the need_wakeup flag. If
> need_wakeup is enabled by the user, the contract is that user-space
> needs to check the need_wakeup flag and act on it. If it does not,
> then that is a programming error and it can be set for any unspecified
> reason. No reason to modify the application, if it checks need_wakeup.
> But if this patch behaves like that I have not checked.
>

It does not behave exactly like this. If need_wakeup is enabled, the 
napi look exists, but if not the napi is rearmed -- so we'll get a less 
efficient loop. I'll need address this.

I'm leaning towards a more explicit opt-in like Max suggested. As Max 
pointed out, AF_XDP/XDP_TX is actually a non-insane(!) way of using 
AF_XDP zero-copy, which will suffer from the early exit.


> Good points in the rest of the mail, that I think should be addressed.
>

Yeah, I agree. I will take a step back an rethink. I'll experiment with
the busy-polling suggested by Jakub, and also an opt-in early exit.

Thanks for all the suggestions folks!


Cheers,
Björn


> /Magnus
> 
>> Is it required to change xdpsock accordingly?
>> Also, when need_wakeup is disabled, your driver implementation seems to
>> quit NAPI anyway, but it shouldn't happen, because no one will send a
>> wakeup.
>>
>> Waiting until the RX ring fills up, then passing control to the
>> application and waiting until the hardware completion queue fills up,
>> and so on increases latency - the busy polling approach sounds more
>> legit here.
>>
>> The behavior may be different depending on the driver implementation:
>>
>> 1. If you arm the completion queue and leave interrupts enabled on early
>> exit too, the application will soon be interrupted anyway and won't have
>> much time to process many packets, leading to app <-> NAPI ping-pong one
>> packet at a time, making NAPI inefficient.
>>
>> 2. If you don't arm the completion queue on early exit and wait for the
>> explicit wakeup from the application, it will easily overflow the
>> hardware completion queue, because we don't have a symmetric mechanism
>> to stop the application on imminent hardware queue overflow. It doesn't
>> feel correct and may be trickier to handle: if the application is too
>> slow, such drops should happen on driver/kernel level, not in hardware.
>>
>> Which behavior is used in your drivers? Or am I missing some more options?
>>
>> BTW, it should be better to pass control to the application before the
>> first dropped packet, not after it has been dropped.
>>
>> Some workloads different from pure AF_XDP, for example, 50/50 AF_XDP and
>> XDP_TX may suffer from such behavior, so it's another point to make a
>> knob on the application layer to enable/disable it.
>>
>>   From the driver API perspective, I would prefer to see a simpler API if
>> possible. The current API exposes things that the driver shouldn't know
>> (BPF map type), and requires XSK-specific handling. It would be better
>> if some specific error code returned from xdp_do_redirect was reserved
>> to mean "exit NAPI early if you support it". This way we wouldn't need
>> two new helpers, two xdp_do_redirect functions, and this approach would
>> be extensible to other non-XSK use cases without further changes in the
>> driver, and also the logic to opt-in the feature could be put inside the
>> kernel.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Max
>>
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Björn
>>

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