netdev - Re: Very slow macsec transfers on OpenPOWER hardware

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Date:   Sun, 8 Aug 2021 00:35:38 -0500 (CDT)
From:   Timothy Pearson <tpearson@...torengineering.com>
To:     netdev <netdev@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: Very slow macsec transfers on OpenPOWER hardware

Quick update:

1.) Disabling encryption actually relieves the load on the softirq handler entirely, but the throughput remains abysmal with extremely high load in the gf128mul_lle function.

2.) Bizarrely, unloading the vmx_crypto (POWER accelerated crypto) module *tripled* the throughput, although 400MB/s is still a long way away from the Gbps range we should be in.

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Timothy Pearson" <tpearson@...torengineering.com>
> To: "netdev" <netdev@...r.kernel.org>
> Sent: Saturday, August 7, 2021 8:37:17 PM
> Subject: Very slow macsec transfers on OpenPOWER hardware

> I'm seeing an extreme performance issue with macsec on OpenPOWER (ppc64le)
> hardware, both with and without encryption.  The base systems are identical
> POWER9-based hosts with Intel 10Gbe Ethernet adapters; the base link validates
> at 9.9Gbps but the macsec link maxes out at around 250Mbps without encryption
> and only 170Mbps with encryption.
> 
> Ordinarily I'd suspect a cipher module isn't loaded, but the results without
> encryption seem to point somewhere else.  In both cases the softirq load is
> extremely high (100% pegged on one CPU core).
> 
> Any debugging tips are appreciated -- I can't imagine a 100-fold performance
> reduction over the native link is correct. ;)
> 
> Thanks!