Much improved sosend_*() functions

[Randall Stewart]

Andrew Gallatin wrote:
> Andre Oppermann writes:
>  > Andrew Gallatin wrote:
>  > > Andre,
>  > > 
>  > > I meant to ask: Did you try 16KB jumbos?  Did they perform
>  > > any better than page-sized jumbos?
>  > 
>  > No, I didn't try 16K jumbos.  The problem with anything larger than
>  > page size is that it may look contigous in kernel memory but isn't
>  > in physical memory.  Thus you need the same number of descriptors
>  > for the network card as with page sized (4K) clusters.
> 
> But it would allow you to do one copyin, rather than 4.   I
> don't know how much this would help, but it might be worth
> looking at.

It helped the SCTP code quite a bit when I optimized it
to use this... can't remember how much of a boost it
got.. (I started using all the frames at one time).. and
of course it only helps when the msg size being
sent is > 9k...

But it was a help... at least on the copy-in side for
sending down..


> 
>  > > Also, if we're going to change how mbufs work, let's add something
>  > > like Linux's skb_frag_t frags[MAX_SKB_FRAGS]; In FreeBSD parlence,
>  > > this embeds something like an array of sf_bufs pointers in mbuf.  The
>  > > big difference to a chain of M_EXT mbufs is that you need to allocate
>  > > only one mbuf wrapper, rather than one for each item in the list.
>  > > Also, the reference is kept in the page (or sf_buf) itself, and the
>  > > data offset is kept in the skbbuf (or mbuf).
>  > 
>  > We are not going to change how mbufs work.
>  > 
>  > > This allows us to do cool things like allocate a single page, and use
>  > > both halves of it for 2 separate 1500 byte frames.  This allows us to
>  > > achieve *amazing* results in combination with LRO, because it allows
>  > > us to do, on average, many fewer allocations per byte.  Especially in
>  > > combination with Linux's "high order" page allocations.  Using order-2
>  > > allocations and LRO, I've actually seen 10GbE line rate receives on a
>  > > wimpy 2.0GHz Athlon64.  
>  > 
>  > I have just started tackling the receive path.  Lets see what comes out
>  > of it first before we jump to conclusions.
> 
> It could be mbufs are cheaper to get than skbs and pages on linux,
> but I doubt it.  FWIW, linux has an skb chaining mechanism
> (frag_list).  My first LRO experiment was based on allocating "normal"
> skbs and chaining them.  That maxed out at around 5.2Gb/s (on the same
> hardware I see line rate on).

This would be a drastic set of changes.. a bit more than
the simple add a few more sizes and get rid of data inside
the mbuf... which would shrink the mbuf size considerable... of
course one would need always a data EXT...

R

> 
> Drew
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-- 
Randall Stewart
NSSTG - Cisco Systems Inc.
803-345-0369 <or> 815-342-5222 (cell)