Re: [RFC 0/7] Add support to process rx packets in thread

From: Sebastian Gottschall
Date: Sat Jul 25 2020 - 06:38:12 EST

you may consider this

https://www.mail-archive.com/linux-kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/msg1142611.html <https://www.mail-archive.com/linux-kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/msg1142611.html>

years ago someone already wanted to bring this feature upstream, but it was denied. i already tested this patch the last 2 days and it worked so far (with some little modifications)
so such a solution existed already and may be considered here

Sebastian


someone

Am 25.07.2020 um 10:16 schrieb Hillf Danton:
On Wed, 22 Jul 2020 09:12:42 +0000 David Laight wrote:
On 21 July 2020 18:25 Andrew Lunn wrote:

On Tue, Jul 21, 2020 at 10:44:19PM +0530, Rakesh Pillai wrote:
NAPI gets scheduled on the CPU core which got the
interrupt. The linux scheduler cannot move it to a
different core, even if the CPU on which NAPI is running
is heavily loaded. This can lead to degraded wifi
performance when running traffic at peak data rates.

A thread on the other hand can be moved to different
CPU cores, if the one on which its running is heavily
loaded. During high incoming data traffic, this gives
better performance, since the thread can be moved to a
less loaded or sometimes even a more powerful CPU core
to account for the required CPU performance in order
to process the incoming packets.

This patch series adds the support to use a high priority
thread to process the incoming packets, as opposed to
everything being done in NAPI context.
I don't see why this problem is limited to the ath10k driver. I expect
it applies to all drivers using NAPI. So shouldn't you be solving this
in the NAPI core? Allow a driver to request the NAPI core uses a
thread?
It's not just NAPI the problem is with the softint processing.
I suspect a lot of systems would work better if it ran as
a (highish priority) kernel thread.
Hi folks

Below is a minimunm poc implementation I can imagine on top of workqueue
to make napi threaded. Thoughts are appreciated.

I've had to remove the main locks from a multi-threaded application
and replace them with atomic counters.
Consider what happens when the threads remove items from a shared
work list.
The code looks like:
mutex_enter();
remove_item_from_list();
mutex_exit().
The mutex is only held for a few instructions, so while you'd expect
the cache line to be 'hot' you wouldn't get real contention.
However the following scenarios happen:
1) An ethernet interrupt happens while the mutex is held.
This stops the other threads until all the softint processing
has finished.
2) An ethernet interrupt (and softint) runs on a thread that is
waiting for the mutex.
(Or on the cpu that the thread's processor affinity ties it to.)
In this case the 'fair' (ticket) mutex code won't let any other
thread acquire the mutex.
So again everything stops until the softints all complete.

The second one is also a problem when trying to wake up all
the threads (eg after adding a lot of items to the list).
The ticket locks force them to wake in order, but
sometimes the 'thundering herd' would work better.

IIRC this is actually worse for processes running under the RT
scheduler (without CONFIG_PREEMPT) because the they are almost
always scheduled on the same cpu they ran on last.
If it is busy, but cannot be pre-empted, they are not moved
to an idle cpu.
To confound things there is a very broken workaround for broken
hardware in the driver for the e1000 interface on (at least)
Ivy Bridge cpu that can cause the driver to spin for a very
long time (IIRC milliseconds) whenever it has to write to a
MAC register (ie on every transmit setup).

David

-
Registered Address Lakeside, Bramley Road, Mount Farm, Milton Keynes, MK1 1PT, UK
Registration No: 1397386 (Wales)
To make napi threaded, if either irq or softirq thread is entirely ruled
out, add napi::work that will be queued on a highpri workqueue. It is
actually a unbound one to facilitate scheduler to catter napi loads on to
idle CPU cores. What users need to do with the threaded napi
is s/netif_napi_add/netif_threaded_napi_add/ and no more.

--- a/include/linux/netdevice.h
+++ b/include/linux/netdevice.h
@@ -338,6 +338,9 @@ struct napi_struct {
struct list_head dev_list;
struct hlist_node napi_hash_node;
unsigned int napi_id;
+#ifdef CONFIG_THREADED_NAPI
+ struct work_struct work;
+#endif
};
enum {
@@ -2234,6 +2237,19 @@ static inline void *netdev_priv(const st
void netif_napi_add(struct net_device *dev, struct napi_struct *napi,
int (*poll)(struct napi_struct *, int), int weight);
+#ifdef CONFIG_THREADED_NAPI
+void netif_threaded_napi_add(struct net_device *dev, struct napi_struct *napi,
+ int (*poll)(struct napi_struct *, int), int weight);
+#else
+static inline void netif_threaded_napi_add(struct net_device *dev,
+ struct napi_struct *napi,
+ int (*poll)(struct napi_struct *, int),
+ int weight)
+{
+ netif_napi_add(dev, napi, poll, weight);
+}
+#endif
+
/**
* netif_tx_napi_add - initialize a NAPI context
* @dev: network device
--- a/net/core/dev.c
+++ b/net/core/dev.c
@@ -6277,6 +6277,61 @@ static int process_backlog(struct napi_s
return work;
}
+#ifdef CONFIG_THREADED_NAPI
+/* unbound highpri workqueue for threaded napi */
+static struct workqueue_struct *napi_workq;
+
+static void napi_workfn(struct work_struct *work)
+{
+ struct napi_struct *n = container_of(work, struct napi_struct, work);
+
+ for (;;) {
+ if (!test_bit(NAPI_STATE_SCHED, &n->state))
+ return;
+
+ if (n->poll(n, n->weight) < n->weight)
+ return;
+
+ if (need_resched()) {
+ /*
+ * have to pay for the latency of task switch even if
+ * napi is scheduled
+ */
+ if (test_bit(NAPI_STATE_SCHED, &n->state))
+ queue_work(napi_workq, work);
+ return;
+ }
+ }
+}
+
+void netif_threaded_napi_add(struct net_device *dev,
+ struct napi_struct *napi,
+ int (*poll)(struct napi_struct *, int),
+ int weight)
+{
+ netif_napi_add(dev, napi, poll, weight);
+ INIT_WORK(&napi->work, napi_workfn);
+}
+
+static inline bool is_threaded_napi(struct napi_struct *n)
+{
+ return n->work.func == napi_workfn;
+}
+
+static inline void threaded_napi_sched(struct napi_struct *n)
+{
+ if (is_threaded_napi(n))
+ queue_work(napi_workq, &n->work);
+ else
+ ____napi_schedule(this_cpu_ptr(&softnet_data), n);
+}
+#else
+static inline void threaded_napi_sched(struct napi_struct *n)
+{
+ ____napi_schedule(this_cpu_ptr(&softnet_data), n);
+}
+#endif
+
/**
* __napi_schedule - schedule for receive
* @n: entry to schedule
@@ -6289,7 +6344,7 @@ void __napi_schedule(struct napi_struct
unsigned long flags;
local_irq_save(flags);
- ____napi_schedule(this_cpu_ptr(&softnet_data), n);
+ threaded_napi_sched(n);
local_irq_restore(flags);
}
EXPORT_SYMBOL(__napi_schedule);
@@ -6335,7 +6390,7 @@ EXPORT_SYMBOL(napi_schedule_prep);
*/
void __napi_schedule_irqoff(struct napi_struct *n)
{
- ____napi_schedule(this_cpu_ptr(&softnet_data), n);
+ threaded_napi_sched(n);
}
EXPORT_SYMBOL(__napi_schedule_irqoff);
@@ -10685,6 +10740,10 @@ static int __init net_dev_init(void)
sd->backlog.weight = weight_p;
}
+#ifdef CONFIG_THREADED_NAPI
+ napi_workq = alloc_workqueue("napi_workq", WQ_UNBOUND | WQ_HIGHPRI,
+ WQ_UNBOUND_MAX_ACTIVE);
+#endif
dev_boot_phase = 0;
/* The loopback device is special if any other network devices


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