Re: vchiq: Performance regression since 5.18-rc1

From: Phil Elwell
Date: Mon May 23 2022 - 07:01:28 EST


Hi Stefan,

On 23/05/2022 11:48, Stefan Wahren wrote:
Hi Phil,

Am 23.05.22 um 11:29 schrieb Phil Elwell:
Hi Stefan,

On 23/05/2022 07:19, Stefan Wahren wrote:
Hi Paul,

Am 23.05.22 um 06:48 schrieb Paul E. McKenney:
On Sun, May 22, 2022 at 05:11:36PM +0200, Stefan Wahren wrote:
Hi Paul,

Am 22.05.22 um 01:46 schrieb Paul E. McKenney:
On Sun, May 22, 2022 at 01:22:00AM +0200, Stefan Wahren wrote:
Hi,

while testing the staging/vc04_services/interface/vchiq_arm driver with my
Raspberry Pi 3 B+ (multi_v7_defconfig) i noticed a huge performance
regression since [ff042f4a9b050895a42cae893cc01fa2ca81b95c] mm:
lru_cache_disable: replace work queue synchronization with synchronize_rcu

Usually i run "vchiq_test -f 1" to see the driver is still working [1].

Before commit:

real    0m1,500s
user    0m0,068s
sys    0m0,846s

After commit:

real    7m11,449s
user    0m2,049s
sys    0m0,023s

Best regards

[1] - https://github.com/raspberrypi/userland
Please feel free to try the patch shown below.  Or the pair of patches
from Rik here:

https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20220218183114.2867528-2-riel@xxxxxxxxxxx/
https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20220218183114.2867528-3-riel@xxxxxxxxxxx/
I tried your patch and Rik's patches but in both cases vchiq_test runs 7
minutes instead of ~ 1 second.
That is surprising.  Do you boot with rcupdate.rcu_normal=1?
No, not explicit.
   That would
nullify my patch, but I would expect that Rik's patch would still provide
increased performance even in that case.
I will retest with a fresh SD card image.

Could you please characterize where the slowdown is occurring?

Unfortunately i don't have a deep insight into driver and vchiq_test tool. Just a user view.

Do you think an strace would be a good starting point?

@Phil Any advices to analyse this issue?

Sending many small control packets:

   vchiq_test -c 1 10000

essentially tests interrupt latency. Using a small number of large bulk transfers:

   vchiq_test -b 10000 1

becomes a test of how long it takes to lock down pages. It also tests DMA transfer speeds, but since the DMA is run by the firmware (which you aren't changing), I think you can rule that.
Thanks i will try.

You may also find it helpful to include "force_turbo=1" in config.txt for more predictable results.

By the way, running our 5.18-rc7-based branch on a 3B+ I'm not seeing any performance problems:
I assume you are using arm/bcm2709_defconfig and not arm/multi_v7_defconfig as me?

That's correct. Simply switching to multi_v7_defconfig breaks vchiq completely, presumably because it doesn't define CONFIG_BCM2835_VCHIQ.

Phil


pi@raspberrypi:~$ time vchiq_test -f 1
Functional test - iters:1
======== iteration 1 ========
Testing bulk transfer for alignment.
Testing bulk transfer at PAGE_SIZE.

real    0m0.512s
user    0m0.042s
sys     0m0.165s

Phil