[dpdk-dev] [RFC PATCH] net/virtio: Align Virtio-net header on cache line in receive path

Maxime Coquelin maxime.coquelin at redhat.com
Wed Feb 22 10:39:42 CET 2017



On 02/22/2017 03:49 AM, Yang, Zhiyong wrote:
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: dev [mailto:dev-bounces at dpdk.org] On Behalf Of Yuanhan Liu
>> Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2017 9:38 AM
>> To: Maxime Coquelin <maxime.coquelin at redhat.com>
>> Cc: Liang, Cunming <cunming.liang at intel.com>; Tan, Jianfeng
>> <jianfeng.tan at intel.com>; dev at dpdk.org
>> Subject: Re: [dpdk-dev] [RFC PATCH] net/virtio: Align Virtio-net header on
>> cache line in receive path
>>
>> On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 06:32:43PM +0100, Maxime Coquelin wrote:
>>> This patch aligns the Virtio-net header on a cache-line boundary to
>>> optimize cache utilization, as it puts the Virtio-net header (which is
>>> always accessed) on the same cache line as the packet header.
>>>
>>> For example with an application that forwards packets at L2 level, a
>>> single cache-line will be accessed with this patch, instead of two
>>> before.
>>
>> I'm assuming you were testing pkt size <= (64 - hdr_size)?
>>
>>> In case of multi-buffers packets, next segments will be aligned on a
>>> cache-line boundary, instead of cache-line boundary minus size of vnet
>>> header before.
>>
>> The another thing is, this patch always makes the pkt data cache unaligned
>> for the first packet, which makes Zhihong's optimization on memcpy (for big
>> packet) useless.
>
> Why not could  we keep pkt data starting always on  the cache-line boundary?
> In case of multi-buffer, the first remains unchanged, next segments can do as
> Maxime said that.

This is not possible to have both the first and next buffers aligned on 
cache line boundary, as we don't know whether the deccriptor will be the 
first one, or a subsequent one on Virtio side when we refill the vq.

Cheers,
Maxime

>
> Thanks
> Zhiyong
>


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