From owner-freebsd-net@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Mar 30 13:27:23 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-net@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5CFBA106564A; Sun, 30 Mar 2008 13:27:23 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from rwatson@FreeBSD.org) Received: from cyrus.watson.org (cyrus.watson.org [209.31.154.42]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3D59F8FC14; Sun, 30 Mar 2008 13:27:23 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from rwatson@FreeBSD.org) Received: from fledge.watson.org (fledge.watson.org [209.31.154.41]) by cyrus.watson.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D68CE46B3B; Sun, 30 Mar 2008 09:27:22 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2008 14:27:22 +0100 (BST) From: Robert Watson X-X-Sender: robert@fledge.watson.org To: Alexander Motin In-Reply-To: <47EF77DE.6040200@FreeBSD.org> Message-ID: <20080330142332.Y5921@fledge.watson.org> References: <47EF4F18.502@FreeBSD.org> <20080330112846.Y5921@fledge.watson.org> <47EF77DE.6040200@FreeBSD.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, FreeBSD Net Subject: Re: Multiple netgraph threads X-BeenThere: freebsd-net@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Networking and TCP/IP with FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2008 13:27:23 -0000 On Sun, 30 Mar 2008, Alexander Motin wrote: >> My initial leaning would be that we would like to avoid adding too many >> more threads that will do per-packet work, as that leads to excessive >> context switching. > > Netgraph uses queueing only as last resort, when direct call is not possible > due to locking or stack limitations. For example, while working with kernel > sockets (*upcall)() I have got many issues which make impossible to freely > use received data without queueing as upcall() caller holds some locks > leading to unpredicted LORs in socket/TCP/UDP code. In case of such forced > queueing, node becomes an independent data source which can be pinned to and > processed by whatever specialized thread or netisr, when it will be able to > do it more effectively. I guess my caution is that it does not necessarily follow from a design that allows for explicit parallelism that the implementation will use it well, and that any time context switchs are necessarily introduced, cost goes up. The move to direct dispatch from the ithread, despite reducing opportunities for parallelism, significantly increased performance for many local workloads. If we have a netisr thread, an ithread, and a netgraph thread, the potential context switch overhead is significant, even if we are doing a good job at batching work transfer between them. Often times, the way this behaves in practice is quite dependent on scheduling, and right now we have known defficiencies in this area, so give it a try on an SMP box and see what happens. Since you're a FreeBSD committer, you can sign up to use the netperf cluster, which might not be a bad idea if you don't have local access to a good SMP test setup. Robert N M Watson Computer Laboratory University of Cambridge