Re: Regression in throughput between kvm guests over virtual bridge

[Matthew Rosato <mjrosato@linux.vnet.ibm.com>]

>> This case should be quite similar with pkgten, if you got improvement with
>> pktgen, usually it was also the same for UDP, could you please try to disable
>> tso, gso, gro, ufo on all host tap devices and guest virtio-net devices? Currently
>> the most significant tests would be like this AFAICT:
>>
>> Host->VM     4.12    4.13
>>  TCP:
>>  UDP:
>> pktgen:
>>
>> Don't want to bother you too much, so maybe 4.12 & 4.13 without Jason's patch should
>> work since we have seen positive number for that, you can also temporarily skip
>> net-next as well.
> 
> Here are the requested numbers, averaged over numerous runs --  guest is
> 4GB+1vcpu, host uperf/pktgen bound to 1 host CPU + qemu and vhost thread
> pinned to other unique host CPUs.  tso, gso, gro, ufo disabled on host
> taps / guest virtio-net devs as requested:
> 
> Host->VM	4.12		4.13
> TCP:		9.92Gb/s	6.44Gb/s
> UDP:		5.77Gb/s	6.63Gb/s
> pktgen:		1572403pps	1904265pps
> 
> UDP/pktgen both show improvement from 4.12->4.13.  More interesting,
> however, is that I am seeing the TCP regression for the first time from
> host->VM.  I wonder if the combination of CPU binding + disabling of one
> or more of tso/gso/gro/ufo is related.
> 
>>
>> If you see UDP and pktgen are aligned, then it might be helpful to continue
>> the other two cases, otherwise we fail in the first place.
> 

I continued running many iterations of these tests between 4.12 and
4.13..  My throughput findings can be summarized as:

VM->VM case:
UDP:  roughly equivalent
TCP:  Consistent regression (5-10%)

VM->Host
Both UDP and TCP traffic are roughly equivalent.

Host->VM
UDP+pktgen: improvement (5-10%), but inconsistent
TCP: Consistent regression (25-30%)

Host->VM UDP and pktgen seemed to show improvement in some runs, and in
others seemed to mirror 4.12-level performance.

The TCP regression for VM->VM is no surprise, we started with that.
It's still consistent, but smaller in this specific environment.

The TCP regression in Host->VM is interesting because I wasn't seeing it
consistently before binding CPUs + disabling tso/gso/gro/ufo.  Also
interesting because of how large it is -- By any chance can you see this
regression on x86 with the same configuration?