From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Andi Kleen Subject: Re: RFC: NAPI packet weighting patch Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2005 01:13:00 +0200 Message-ID: <20050622231300.GC14251@wotan.suse.de> References: <20050622.132241.21929037.davem@davemloft.net> <200506222242.j5MMgbxS009935@guinness.s2io.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: "'David S. Miller'" , ak@suse.de, hadi@cyberus.ca, becker@scyld.com, rick.jones2@hp.com, netdev@oss.sgi.com, davem@redhat.com Return-path: To: Leonid Grossman Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <200506222242.j5MMgbxS009935@guinness.s2io.com> Sender: netdev-bounce@oss.sgi.com Errors-to: netdev-bounce@oss.sgi.com List-Id: netdev.vger.kernel.org > This is very hw-dependent, since there are NICs that read descriptors in > batches anyways - but the second argument below is compelling. The computing time must be quite long to be really a win. You need to waste a few hundred cycles at least on a modern fast CPU. -Andi > > > > 2) As shown above, it gives you compute time which can be used to > > schedule the prefetch. This nearly makes RX replenishment free. > > Instead of having the CPU spin on a cache miss when we run > > eth_type_trans() during those cycles, we do useful work.