From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Tue, 25 Sep 2001 17:41:57 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Tue, 25 Sep 2001 17:41:48 -0400 Received: from host154.207-175-42.redhat.com ([207.175.42.154]:16314 "EHLO lacrosse.corp.redhat.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Tue, 25 Sep 2001 17:41:38 -0400 Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2001 17:42:04 -0400 From: Benjamin LaHaise To: Chris Newton Cc: Andrew Morton , linux-kernel Subject: Re: excessive interrupts on network cards Message-ID: <20010925174203.C19494@redhat.com> In-Reply-To: <3BB11992@webmail1> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: <3BB11992@webmail1>; from newton@unb.ca on Tue, Sep 25, 2001 at 06:38:31PM -0300 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Tue, Sep 25, 2001 at 06:38:31PM -0300, Chris Newton wrote: > Yea, it is a single port card... I had meant to mention that in the email I > sent out... ie: that it wasn't reporting correctly... but, I didnt really > think it was related, since the eepro was doing the same thing. > > As for comparing with ifconfig, I ran 'watch 1 ifconfig -a', and sure > enough, I have about ~7000-7500 packets coming in right now. And, the > 'procinfo -D', reports ~21000-22000 interrupts per second. This is heavily dependant on the interrupt mitigation features that a card has. At least for the ns83820 driver, I'm testing a technique where the driver essentially switches to polled mode once the interrupt load goes above a certain threshold, thereby limiting the load to ~2500 irq/sec. Combined with carefully placed data prefetching, I'm seeing a huge increase in performance. Of course, this comes at the expense of latency. -ben