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Date:      Fri, 24 Jul 2009 14:10:56 -0700 (PDT)
From:      Barney Cordoba <barney_cordoba@yahoo.com>
To:        freebsd-net@FreeBSD.org, Peter Steele <psteele@webmail.maxiscale.com>
Subject:   Re: nfe taskq performance issues
Message-ID:  <624694.56110.qm@web63902.mail.re1.yahoo.com>

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--- On Thu, 7/23/09, Peter Steele <psteele@webmail.maxiscale.com> wrote:

> From: Peter Steele <psteele@webmail.maxiscale.com>
> Subject: nfe taskq performance issues
> To: freebsd-net@FreeBSD.org
> Date: Thursday, July 23, 2009, 11:58 AM
> We've been hitting serious nfe taskq
> performance issues during stress
> tests and in doing some research on the problem we came
> across this old
> email:
> 
>  
> 
> From: Ivan Voras <ivoras@freebsd.org>
> Date: April 28, 2009 3:53:14 AM PDT
> To: freebsd-threads@freebsd.org
> Cc: freebsd-net@freebsd.org,
> freebsd-performance@freebsd.org
> Subject: Re: FreeBSD 7.1 taskq em performance
> >
> > I have been hitting some barrier with FreeBSD 7.1
> network performance.
> I
> > have written an application which contains two kernel
> threads that
> takes
> > mbufs directly from a network interface and forwards
> to another
> network
> > interface. This idea is to simulate different network
> environment.
> >
> > I have been using FreeBSD 6.4 amd64 and tested with an
> Ixia box
> > (specialised hardware firing very high packet rate).
> The PC was a
> Core2 2.6
> > GHz with dual ports Intel PCIE Gigabit network card.
> It can manage up
> to 1.2
> > million pps.
> >
> > I have a higher spec PC with FreeBSD 7.1 amd64 and
> Quadcore 2.3 GHz
> and
> > PCIE Gigabit network card. The performance can only
> achieve up to 600k
> pps.
> > I notice the 'taskq em0' and 'taskq em1' is solid 100%
> CPU but it is
> not in
> > FreeBSD 6.4. 
> 
>  
> 
> In our case we are running FreeBSD 7.0, but we are seeing
> our boxes
> experience serious thread starvation issues as the nfe0 cpu
> percentage
> climbs steadily while cpu idle time drops at times to 0
> percent. This
> email thread mentioned a patch for the em driver here:
> 
>  
> 
> http://people.yandex-team.ru/~wawa/ 
> <http://people.yandex-team.ru/%7Ewawa/>;

It means you're using your CPU up processing packets. There are any number
of reasons for it; lock contention, poor general design, network stack
contention. I'm not sure why you'd want to use a 64 bit build for a 
network application, but you'll have to track down the source by profiling
or running focused tests to isolate your bottlenecks.

Barney


      



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