Re: [PATCH net-next 3/3] net: sched: make skip_sw actually skip software

From: Jamal Hadi Salim
Date: Thu Feb 15 2024 - 12:49:30 EST


On Thu, Feb 15, 2024 at 11:06 AM Asbjørn Sloth Tønnesen <ast@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> TC filters come in 3 variants:
> - no flag (no opinion, process wherever possible)
> - skip_hw (do not process filter by hardware)
> - skip_sw (do not process filter by software)
>
> However skip_sw is implemented so that the skip_sw
> flag can first be checked, after it has been matched.
>
> IMHO it's common when using skip_sw, to use it on all rules.
>
> So if all filters in a block is skip_sw filters, then
> we can bail early, we can thus avoid having to match
> the filters, just to check for the skip_sw flag.
>
> +----------------------------+--------+--------+--------+
> | Test description | Pre | Post | Rel. |
> | | kpps | kpps | chg. |
> +----------------------------+--------+--------+--------+
> | basic forwarding + notrack | 1264.9 | 1277.7 | 1.01x |
> | switch to eswitch mode | 1067.1 | 1071.0 | 1.00x |
> | add ingress qdisc | 1056.0 | 1059.1 | 1.00x |
> +----------------------------+--------+--------+--------+
> | 1 non-matching rule | 927.9 | 1057.1 | 1.14x |
> | 10 non-matching rules | 495.8 | 1055.6 | 2.13x |
> | 25 non-matching rules | 280.6 | 1053.5 | 3.75x |
> | 50 non-matching rules | 162.0 | 1055.7 | 6.52x |
> | 100 non-matching rules | 87.7 | 1019.0 | 11.62x |
> +----------------------------+--------+--------+--------+
>
> perf top (100 n-m skip_sw rules - pre patch):
> 25.57% [kernel] [k] __skb_flow_dissect
> 20.77% [kernel] [k] rhashtable_jhash2
> 14.26% [kernel] [k] fl_classify
> 13.28% [kernel] [k] fl_mask_lookup
> 6.38% [kernel] [k] memset_orig
> 3.22% [kernel] [k] tcf_classify
>
> perf top (100 n-m skip_sw rules - post patch):
> 4.28% [kernel] [k] __dev_queue_xmit
> 3.80% [kernel] [k] check_preemption_disabled
> 3.68% [kernel] [k] nft_do_chain
> 3.08% [kernel] [k] __netif_receive_skb_core.constprop.0
> 2.59% [kernel] [k] mlx5e_xmit
> 2.48% [kernel] [k] mlx5e_skb_from_cqe_mpwrq_nonlinear
>

The concept makes sense - but i am wondering when you have a mix of
skip_sw and skip_hw if it makes more sense to just avoid looking up
skip_sw at all in the s/w datapath? Potentially by separating the
hashes for skip_sw/hw. I know it's a deeper surgery - but would be
more general purpose....unless i am missing something

> Test setup:
> DUT: Intel Xeon D-1518 (2.20GHz) w/ Nvidia/Mellanox ConnectX-6 Dx 2x100G
> Data rate measured on switch (Extreme X690), and DUT connected as
> a router on a stick, with pktgen and pktsink as VLANs.
> Pktgen was in range 12.79 - 12.95 Mpps across all tests.
>

Hrm. Those are "tiny" numbers (25G @64B is about 3x that). What are
the packet sizes?
Perhaps the traffic generator is a limitation here?
Also feels like you are doing exact matches? A sample flower rule
would have helped.

cheers,
jamal
> Signed-off-by: Asbjørn Sloth Tønnesen <ast@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> ---
> include/net/pkt_cls.h | 5 +++++
> net/core/dev.c | 3 +++
> 2 files changed, 8 insertions(+)
>
> diff --git a/include/net/pkt_cls.h b/include/net/pkt_cls.h
> index a4ee43f493bb..a065da4df7ff 100644
> --- a/include/net/pkt_cls.h
> +++ b/include/net/pkt_cls.h
> @@ -74,6 +74,11 @@ static inline bool tcf_block_non_null_shared(struct tcf_block *block)
> return block && block->index;
> }
>
> +static inline bool tcf_block_has_skip_sw_only(struct tcf_block *block)
> +{
> + return block && atomic_read(&block->filtercnt) == atomic_read(&block->skipswcnt);
> +}
> +
> static inline struct Qdisc *tcf_block_q(struct tcf_block *block)
> {
> WARN_ON(tcf_block_shared(block));
> diff --git a/net/core/dev.c b/net/core/dev.c
> index d8dd293a7a27..7cd014e5066e 100644
> --- a/net/core/dev.c
> +++ b/net/core/dev.c
> @@ -3910,6 +3910,9 @@ static int tc_run(struct tcx_entry *entry, struct sk_buff *skb,
> if (!miniq)
> return ret;
>
> + if (tcf_block_has_skip_sw_only(miniq->block))
> + return ret;
> +
> tc_skb_cb(skb)->mru = 0;
> tc_skb_cb(skb)->post_ct = false;
> tcf_set_drop_reason(skb, *drop_reason);
> --
> 2.43.0
>