From owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Tue May 25 11:42:41 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4AFA516A4CF; Tue, 25 May 2004 11:42:41 -0700 (PDT) Received: from fledge.watson.org (fledge.watson.org [204.156.12.50]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BCE7043D1F; Tue, 25 May 2004 11:42:40 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from robert@fledge.watson.org) Received: from fledge.watson.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by fledge.watson.org (8.12.11/8.12.11) with ESMTP id i4PIfowP093428; Tue, 25 May 2004 14:41:50 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from robert@fledge.watson.org) Received: from localhost (robert@localhost)i4PIfods093425; Tue, 25 May 2004 14:41:50 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from robert@fledge.watson.org) Date: Tue, 25 May 2004 14:41:50 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert Watson X-Sender: robert@fledge.watson.org To: Luigi Rizzo In-Reply-To: <20040525113208.A74130@xorpc.icir.org> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII cc: arch@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Network Stack Locking X-BeenThere: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussion related to FreeBSD architecture List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 25 May 2004 18:42:41 -0000 On Tue, 25 May 2004, Luigi Rizzo wrote: > On Tue, May 25, 2004 at 11:20:49AM -0700, Matthew Dillon wrote: > ... > > :Actually, this was the specific point I was making also :-). The question > > :I was asking was about the depth of the message queues between protocol > > :stack layers in actual measurements -- are you observing substantial > > :coallescing between layers as a result of the queues at this point? I'm > ... > > It should also be noted that since today's processors are so damn fast, > > actually maxing out the cpu before maxing out the PCI bus(es), at least > > on a standard workstation, is difficult. > > that's where the soekris comes handy :) (yes i understand that much of > the issues here are related to SMP, but there lot of evidence that a > non-smp 5.x kernel is significantly slower than the equivalent 4.x code, > even on heavy network i/o loads, so there is certainly something to > clean up there too). Happily, I'm well endowed with old and crufty hardware when it comes to UP. That said, it's hard to find a nice middle ground with SMP -- even relatively slow boxes can typically can max out 32-bit PCI, so you need to go with 64-bit if you want to not have that be the bottleneck for gig-E. Robert N M Watson FreeBSD Core Team, TrustedBSD Projects robert@fledge.watson.org Senior Research Scientist, McAfee Research