Re: Network performance with small packets

["Michael S. Tsirkin" <mst@redhat.com>]

On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 08:58:41PM +0930, Rusty Russell wrote:
> On Tue, 12 Apr 2011 23:01:12 +0300, "Michael S. Tsirkin" <mst@redhat.com> wrote:
> > On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 12:19:42PM +1030, Rusty Russell wrote:
> > > Here's an old patch where I played with implementing this:
> > 
> > ...
> > 
> > > 
> > > virtio: put last_used and last_avail index into ring itself.
> > > 
> > > Generally, the other end of the virtio ring doesn't need to see where
> > > you're up to in consuming the ring.  However, to completely understand
> > > what's going on from the outside, this information must be exposed.
> > > For example, if you want to save and restore a virtio_ring, but you're
> > > not the consumer because the kernel is using it directly.
> > > 
> > > Fortunately, we have room to expand:
> > 
> > This seems to be true for x86 kvm and lguest but is it true
> > for s390?
> 
> Yes, as the ring is page aligned so there's always room.
> 
> > Will this last bit work on s390?
> > If I understand correctly the memory is allocated by host there?
> 
> They have to offer the feature, so if the have some way of allocating
> non-page-aligned amounts of memory, they'll have to add those extra 2
> bytes.
> 
> So I think it's OK...
> Rusty.

Correct. I wonder whether we need to pass the relevant flag
to vring_size. If we do we'll need to add a new function
for that though as vring_size is exported to userspace.

-- 
MST