Subject: Re: Optimizing instruction-cache, more packets at each stage

From: Jesper Dangaard Brouer <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2016 12:27:30 +0100

On Wed, 20 Jan 2016 15:27:38 -0800 Tom Herbert <[email-masked]> wrote:

> eth_type_trans touches headers

True, the eth_type_trans() call in the driver is a major bottleneck,
because it touch the packet header and happens very early in the driver.

In my experiments, where I extract several packet before calling
napi_gro_receive(), and I also delay calling eth_type_trans().  Most of
my speedup comes from this trick, as the prefetch() now that enough
time.

 while ((skb = __skb_dequeue(&rx_skb_list)) != NULL) {
	skb->protocol = eth_type_trans(skb, rq->netdev);
	napi_gro_receive(cq->napi, skb);
 }

What is the HW could provide the info we need in the descriptor?!?

eth_type_trans() does two things:

1) determine skb->protocol
2) setup skb->pkt_type = PACKET_{BROADCAST,MULTICAST,OTHERHOST}

Could the HW descriptor deliver the "proto", or perhaps just some bits
on the most common proto's?

The skb->pkt_type don't need many bits.  And I bet the HW already have
the information.  The BROADCAST and MULTICAST indication are easy.  The
PACKET_OTHERHOST, can be turned around, by instead set a PACKET_HOST
indication, if the eth->h_dest match the devices dev->dev_addr (else a
SW compare is required).

Is that doable in hardware?

-- 
Best regards,
  Jesper Dangaard Brouer
  MSc.CS, Principal Kernel Engineer at Red Hat
  Author of http://www.iptv-analyzer.org
  LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/brouer