Re: [RFC PATCH 2/2] macvtap: TX zero copy between guest and host kernel

Michael S. Tsirkin
2010-09-15T10:16:09Z

On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 11:21:15PM -0700, Shirley Ma wrote:
> On Wed, 2010-09-15 at 07:12 +0200, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
> > Yes, I agree this patch is useful for demo purposes:
> > simple, and shows what kind of performance gains
> > we can expect for TX.
>
> Any other issue you can see in this patch beside vhost descriptors
> update?

Another issue is that macvtap can be bound to almost
anything, including e.g. a tap device or a bridge,
which might hang on to skb fragments for unlimited time.
Zero copy TX won't easily work there.
I can imagine either somehow triggering a data copy after the
fact (hard), or detecting such devices and avoiding
zero copy (unfortunate for guest to guest, and drivers
will need tuning).

> Don't you think once I address vhost_add_used_and_signal update
> issue, it is a simple and complete patch for macvtap TX zero copy?
>
> Thanks
> Shirley

I like the fact that the patch is simple. Unfortunately
I suspect it'll stop being simple by the time it's complete :)

--
MST