[PATCH net-next] softirq: reduce latencies

Eric Dumazet
2013-01-03T12:28:52Z

From: Eric Dumazet <edumazet@google.com>

In various network workloads, __do_softirq() latencies can be up
to 20 ms if HZ=1000, and 200 ms if HZ=100.

This is because we iterate 10 times in the softirq dispatcher,
and some actions can consume a lot of cycles.

This patch changes the fallback to ksoftirqd condition to :

- A time limit of 2 ms.
- need_resched() being set on current task

When one of this condition is met, we wakeup ksoftirqd for further
softirq processing if we still have pending softirqs.

I ran several benchmarks and got no significant difference in
throughput, but a very significant reduction of maximum latencies.

Signed-off-by: Eric Dumazet <edumazet@google.com>
Cc: David Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
Cc: Tom Herbert <therbert@google.com>
---
kernel/softirq.c | 17 +++++++++--------
1 file changed, 9 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-)

diff --git a/kernel/softirq.c b/kernel/softirq.c
index ed567ba..64d61ea 100644
--- a/kernel/softirq.c
+++ b/kernel/softirq.c
@@ -195,21 +195,21 @@ void local_bh_enable_ip(unsigned long ip)
EXPORT_SYMBOL(local_bh_enable_ip);

/*
- * We restart softirq processing MAX_SOFTIRQ_RESTART times,
- * and we fall back to softirqd after that.
+ * We restart softirq processing for at most 2 ms,
+ * and if need_resched() is not set.
*
- * This number has been established via experimentation.
+ * These limits have been established via experimentation.
* The two things to balance is latency against fairness -
* we want to handle softirqs as soon as possible, but they
* should not be able to lock up the box.
*/
-#define MAX_SOFTIRQ_RESTART 10
+#define MAX_SOFTIRQ_TIME min(1, (2*HZ/1000))

asmlinkage void __do_softirq(void)
{
struct softirq_action *h;
__u32 pending;
- int max_restart = MAX_SOFTIRQ_RESTART;
+ unsigned long end = jiffies + MAX_SOFTIRQ_TIME;
int cpu;
unsigned long old_flags = current->flags;

@@ -264,11 +264,12 @@ restart:
local_irq_disable();

pending = local_softirq_pending();
- if (pending && --max_restart)
- goto restart;
+ if (pending) {
+ if (time_before(jiffies, end) && !need_resched())
+ goto restart;

- if (pending)
wakeup_softirqd();
+ }

lockdep_softirq_exit();