[dpdk-dev] [RFC PATCH 0/7] support multi-phtread per lcore

[Olivier MATZ]

Hi,

On 12/18/2014 03:32 PM, Bruce Richardson wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 18, 2014 at 12:20:07PM +0000, Walukiewicz, Miroslaw wrote:
>> I have another question regarding your patch.
>>
>>  Could we extend values returned by rte_lcore_id() to set them per thread (really the DPDK lcore is a pthread but started on specific core) instead of creating linear thread id. 
>>
>> The patch would be much simpler and will work same way. The only change would be extending rte_lcore_id when rte_pthread_create() is called. 
>>
>> The value __lcore_id has really an attribute __thread that means it is valid not only per CPU core but also per thread.
>>
>> The mempools, timers, statistics would work without any modifications in that environment.
>>
>>  I do not see any reason why old legacy DPDK applications would not work in that model. 
>>
>> Mirek
> 
> Definite +1 here. 

One remark though: it looks that the rte_rings (and therefore the
rte_mempools) are designed with the assumption that the execution
units are alone on their cores.

As explained in [1], there is a risk that a pthread is interrupted
by the kernel at a bad moment. Therefore another thread can be
blocked, spinning on a variable to change its value.

The same could also occurs with spinlocks which are not designed
to wakeup another pthread when the lock is held (like pthread_locks).

And finally, having several pthreads per core implies that the
application should be designed with large queues: if a pthread is
not scheduled during 10ms, it represents 100K packets at 10M PPS.

I don't say it's impossible to do it, but I think it's not so
simple :)

Regards,
Olivier

[1] http://dpdk.org/ml/archives/dev/2013-November/000714.html