Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2011 13:16:54 +0100 From: Ben Hutchings <bhutchings@solarflare.com> To: Arnaud Lacombe <lacombar@gmail.com> Cc: Juli Mallett <jmallett@freebsd.org>, "Bjoern A. Zeeb" <bzeeb-lists@lists.zabbadoz.net>, Luigi Rizzo <rizzo@iet.unipi.it>, net@freebsd.org Subject: Re: which 10GE cards are supported by FreeBSD ? Message-ID: <1317039416.4122.152.camel@deadeye> In-Reply-To: <CACqU3MUVrnkeMxe7G1W6-A2yYHLXx4ZQkdSytVSSHiB%2BT84H-A@mail.gmail.com> References: <20110924173120.GB71672@onelab2.iet.unipi.it> <78FA5152-123E-492C-9A05-E95C474DE469@lists.zabbadoz.net> <20110924205217.GA72397@onelab2.iet.unipi.it> <CACVs6=_7LQ_TA%2BnDqPYOHJQD2gMMR768P%2BPi4oPmFiRK5V4qCg@mail.gmail.com> <1316995431.4122.123.camel@deadeye> <CACqU3MUVrnkeMxe7G1W6-A2yYHLXx4ZQkdSytVSSHiB%2BT84H-A@mail.gmail.com>
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On Sun, 2011-09-25 at 21:31 -0400, Arnaud Lacombe wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Sun, Sep 25, 2011 at 8:03 PM, Ben Hutchings
> <bhutchings@solarflare.com> wrote:
> > On Sat, 2011-09-24 at 13:56 -0700, Juli Mallett wrote:
> >> On Sat, Sep 24, 2011 at 13:52, Luigi Rizzo <rizzo@iet.unipi.it> wrote:
> >> > apart from the typo ("know know") yes the email contained three
> >> > serious questions, two of which (third party drivers and shops
> >> > which carry the card) i cannot answer looking at the tree.
> >> >
> >> > On top of this, some in-tree drivers may be stale, broken, redundant
> >> > (say ixgb vs ixgbe), and so on. And not all hardware can do line
> >> > rate -- not even at 1G, let alone 10G, so it would be good to know
> >> > also some first hand information on performance.
> >>
> >> ixgb vs. ixgbe is not a stale/redundant issue. ixgb only supports the
> >> 82597, which you'll find is not supported by ixgbe.
> >>
> >> I think you'll have a hard time getting reliable performance
> >> information. There's a lot of smoke and mirrors about performance, as
> >> you point out. It has also been my experience that many 10g devices
> >> cannot reliably do 1g line rate with minimal packet sizes. I don't
> >> fully understand why this is, but most people who I've seen give
> >> performance numbers for FreeBSD are looking at bulk transmit, which is
> >> of course not (necessarily) what you care about for netmap. I've yet
> >> to hear from anyone who can name a 10G NIC one can buy that can do
> >> line rate with minimal packet sizes. Solarflare boasts about lower
> >> latency, so perhaps they'll have a better story in that area.
> > [...]
> >
> > Sorry, our current hardware can't move 64-byte frames at 10G line rate.
> > I can check what the maximum packet rate is if you're interested.
> >
> If you refer to [0] and [1], it would seem that the Solarstorm SFC4000
> (B) supports 4e6 pps. That said, that is a number from 2008.
The current SFC9020/SFL9021 products should be the same in this regard.
> > We will have a FreeBSD driver out real soon now(TM), but most of my work
> > on performance has gone into improving throughput. (The latency should
> > be pretty good if you turn off interrupt moderation, though.) And
> > really I think Onload is more useful than netmap, since it's compatible
> > with existing source and binaries.
> >
> By "FreeBSD driver", do you mean just a driver for the card, or the
> complete Onload stack ? AFAIS, it is currently Linux only.
[...]
It's a standard kernel net driver. Currently there is no work on Onload
for FreeBSD.
Ben.
--
Ben Hutchings, Staff Engineer, Solarflare
Not speaking for my employer; that's the marketing department's job.
They asked us to note that Solarflare product names are trademarked.
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