[fbsd] Network performance in a dual CPU system

[Jeremie Le Hen]

Hi Marcos,

On Fri, Feb 10, 2006 at 08:46:00AM -0500, Marcos Bedinelli wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> We have a 2.4GHz Intel Xeon machine running FreeBSD 6.0-RELEASE-p2. Due 
> to heavy network traffic, CPU utilization on that machine is 100%:
> 
> ===
> 
> mull [~]$top -S
> last pid: 94989;  load averages:  3.69,  4.02,  4.36           up 
> 25+07:21:34  14:51:43
> 105 processes: 2 running, 46 sleeping, 57 waiting
> CPU states:  0.0% user,  0.0% nice,  0.3% system, 99.4% interrupt,  
> 0.3% idle
> Mem: 20M Active, 153M Inact, 84M Wired, 4K Cache, 60M Buf, 237M Free
> Swap: 999M Total, 999M Free
> 
>   PID USERNAME   THR PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE    TIME   WCPU COMMAND
>    60 root         1 -44 -163     0K     8K WAIT   355.6H 72.17% swi1: 
> net
>    39 root         1 -68 -187     0K     8K WAIT    52.3H  5.22% irq28: 
> bge0
>    40 root         1 -68 -187     0K     8K WAIT    28.3H  2.25% irq29: 
> bge1
>    11 root         1 171   52     0K     8K RUN    166.6H  0.00% idle
>    63 root         1 -16    0     0K     8K -      121:55  0.00% yarrow
>    61 root         1 -32 -151     0K     8K WAIT    46:21  0.00% swi4: 
> clock sio
> [...]
> 
> ===
> 
> 
> Does anyone know whether a dual CPU system can help us improve the 
> situation? I was wondering if the software interrupt threads would be 
> divided between the two processors.

I am a few weeks late, I just saw this very interesting thread.  What
solution did you finally employ to circumvent your high interrupt
load ?

Regards,
-- 
Jeremie Le Hen
< jeremie at le-hen dot org >< ttz at chchile dot org >