From what I can tell the practical limitation on the size of the Tx data
buffer is the fact that the Tx descriptor is limited to 14 bits. As such
we cannot use 16K as is typically used on the other Intel drivers. However
artificially limiting ourselves to 8K can be expensive as this means that
we will consume up to 10 descriptors (1 context, 1 for header, and 9 for
payload, non-8K aligned) in a single send.
I propose that we can reduce this by increasing the maximum data for a 4K
aligned block to 12K. We can reduce the descriptors used for a 32K aligned
block by 1 by increasing the size like this. In addition we still have the
4K - 1 of space that is still unused. We can use this as a bit of extra
padding when dealing with data that is not aligned to 4K.
By aligning the descriptors after the first to 4K we can improve the
efficiency of PCIe accesses as we can avoid using byte enables and can fetch
full TLP transactions after the first fetch of the buffer. This helps to
improve PCIe efficiency. Below is the results of testing before and after
with this patch:
Recv Send Send Utilization Service Demand
Socket Socket Message Elapsed Send Recv Send Recv
Size Size Size Time Throughput local remote local remote
bytes bytes bytes secs. 10^6bits/s % S % U us/KB us/KB
Before:
87380 16384 16384 10.00 33682.24 20.27 -1.00 0.592 -1.00
After:
87380 16384 16384 10.00 34204.08 20.54 -1.00 0.590 -1.00
So the net result of this patch is that we have a small gain in throughput
due to a reduction in overhead for putting together the frame.
Signed-off-by: Alexander Duyck <aduyck@mirantis.com>
Tested-by: Andrew Bowers <andrewx.bowers@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Jeff Kirsher <jeffrey.t.kirsher@intel.com>
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