Re: [Qemu-devel] [QA-virtio]:Why vring size is limited to 1024?

[Avi Kivity <avi@cloudius-systems.com>]

On 10/08/2014 03:28 PM, Avi Kivity wrote:
> My old presentation from 2012 or so suggested something like this.
>> We don't need a 64 bit cookie I think - a small 16 bit one
>> should be enough.
>>
>
> A 16 bit cookie means you need an extra table to hold the real request 
> pointers.
>
> With a 64-bit cookie you can store a pointer to the skbuff or bio in 
> the ring itself, and avoid the extra lookup.
>
> The extra lookup isn't the end of the world, since doesn't cross core 
> boundaries, but it's worth avoiding.
>

What you can do is have two types of descriptors: head and fragment

union desc {
     struct head {
          u16 nfrags
          u16 flags
          u64 cookie
     }
     struct frag {
          u64 paddr
          u16 flen
          u16 flags
     }
}

so now a request length is 12*(nfrags+1).

You can be evil and steal some bits from paddr/cookie, and have each 
descriptor 8 bytes long.

btw, I also recommend storing things like vnet_hdr in the ring itself, 
instead of out-of-line in memory.  Maybe the ring should just transport 
bytes and let the upper layer decide how it's formatted.