Subject: rps: some comments

From: Eric Dumazet <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 07 Jan 2010 18:42:41 +0100

Hi Tom

1) netif_receive_skb() might enqueue skb instead of handling them directly.

int netif_receive_skb(struct sk_buff *skb)
{
        int cpu = get_rps_cpu(skb->dev, skb);

        if (cpu < 0)
                return __netif_receive_skb(skb);
        else
                return enqueue_to_backlog(skb, cpu);
}

If get_rps_cpu() happens to select the current cpu, we enqueue to backlog the
skb instead of directly calling __netif_receive_skb().

One way to solve this is to make get_rps_cpu() returns -1 in this case :

...
if (cpu == smp_processor_id() || !cpu_online(cpu))
	cpu = -1;

done:
	rcu_read_unlock();
	return cpu;
} /* get_rps_cpu() */

2) RPS_MAP_SIZE might be too expensive to use in fast path, on big (NR_CPUS=4096) machines :
 num_possible_cpus() has to count all bits set in a bitmap.

#define MAX_RPS_CPUS (num_possible_cpus() < 256 ? num_possible_cpus() : 256)
#define RPS_MAP_SIZE (sizeof(struct rps_map) + (MAX_RPS_CPUS * sizeof(u16))

You can use nr_cpu_ids, or even better a new variable, that you init _once_ to

unsigned int rps_map_size = sizeof(struct rps_map) + (min(256, nr_cpu_ids) * sizeof(u16));

3) cpu hotplug.

I cannot find how cpu unplug can be safe.

if (!cpu_online(cpu))
	cpu = -1;
rcu_read_unlock();
...
cpu_set(cpu, __get_cpu_var(rps_remote_softirq_cpus));
...
__smp_call_function_single(cpu, &queue->csd, 0);

Thanks