Re: [PATCH] rcu: increment quiescent state counter in ksoftirqd()

From: Paul E. McKenney
Date: Fri Feb 27 2009 - 11:34:27 EST


On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 05:08:04PM +0100, Eric Dumazet wrote:
> Eric Dumazet a écrit :
> > Eric Dumazet a écrit :
> >> Stephen Hemminger a écrit :
> >>> The reader/writer lock in ip_tables is acquired in the critical path of
> >>> processing packets and is one of the reasons just loading iptables can cause
> >>> a 20% performance loss. The rwlock serves two functions:
> >>>
> >>> 1) it prevents changes to table state (xt_replace) while table is in use.
> >>> This is now handled by doing rcu on the xt_table. When table is
> >>> replaced, the new table(s) are put in and the old one table(s) are freed
> >>> after RCU period.
> >>>
> >>> 2) it provides synchronization when accesing the counter values.
> >>> This is now handled by swapping in new table_info entries for each cpu
> >>> then summing the old values, and putting the result back onto one
> >>> cpu. On a busy system it may cause sampling to occur at different
> >>> times on each cpu, but no packet/byte counts are lost in the process.
> >>>
> >>> Signed-off-by: Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@xxxxxxxxxx>
> >>
> >> Acked-by: Eric Dumazet <dada1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> >>
> >> Sucessfully tested on my dual quad core machine too, but iptables only (no ipv6 here)
> >>
> >> BTW, my new "tbench 8" result is 2450 MB/s, (it was 2150 MB/s not so long ago)
> >>
> >> Thanks Stephen, thats very cool stuff, yet another rwlock out of kernel :)
> >>
> >
> > While testing multicast flooding stuff, I found that "iptables -nvL" can
> > have a *very* slow response time on my dual quad core machine...
> >
> >
> > # time iptables -nvL
> > Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT 416M packets, 64G bytes)
> > pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination
> >
> > Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT 0 packets, 0 bytes)
> > pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination
> >
> > Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT 401M packets, 62G bytes)
> > pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination
> >
> > real 0m1.810s <<<< HERE >>>>
> > user 0m0.000s
> > sys 0m0.001s
> >
> >
> > CONFIG_NO_HZ=y
> > CONFIG_HZ_1000=y
> > CONFIG_HZ=1000
> >
> > One cpu is 100% handling softirqs, could it be the problem ?
> >
> > Cpu0 : 1.0%us, 14.7%sy, 0.0%ni, 83.3%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 1.0%si, 0.0%st
> > Cpu1 : 3.6%us, 23.2%sy, 0.0%ni, 71.6%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 1.7%si, 0.0%st
> > Cpu2 : 0.0%us, 0.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 0.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi,100.0%si, 0.0%st
> > Cpu3 : 2.7%us, 23.9%sy, 0.0%ni, 71.1%id, 0.7%wa, 0.0%hi, 1.7%si, 0.0%st
> > Cpu4 : 1.3%us, 14.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 83.3%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 1.0%si, 0.0%st
> > Cpu5 : 1.0%us, 14.2%sy, 0.0%ni, 83.4%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 1.3%si, 0.0%st
> > Cpu6 : 0.3%us, 7.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 92.4%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.3%si, 0.0%st
> > Cpu7 : 0.7%us, 8.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 90.0%id, 0.7%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.7%si, 0.0%st
>
> Hi Paul
>
> I found following patch helps if one cpu is looping inside ksoftirqd()
>
> synchronize_rcu() now completes in 40 ms instead of 1800 ms.
>
> Thank you
>
> [PATCH] rcu: increment quiescent state counter in ksoftirqd()
>
> If a machine is flooded by network frames, a cpu can loop 100% of its time
> inside ksoftirqd() without calling schedule().
> This can delay RCU grace period to insane values.
>
> Adding rcu_qsctr_inc() call in ksoftirqd() solves this problem.

Good catch!!! This regression was a result of the recent change
from "schedule()" to "cond_resched()", which got rid of that quiescent
state in the common case where a reschedule is not needed.

Reviewed-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

> Signed-off-by: Eric Dumazet <dada1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> ---
> diff --git a/kernel/softirq.c b/kernel/softirq.c
> index bdbe9de..9041ea7 100644
> --- a/kernel/softirq.c
> +++ b/kernel/softirq.c
> @@ -626,6 +626,7 @@ static int ksoftirqd(void * __bind_cpu)
> preempt_enable_no_resched();
> cond_resched();
> preempt_disable();
> + rcu_qsctr_inc((long)__bind_cpu);
> }
> preempt_enable();
> set_current_state(TASK_INTERRUPTIBLE);
>
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