From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Ben Greear Subject: BCM5704 performance questions. Date: Thu, 09 Jun 2005 17:38:22 -0700 Message-ID: <42A8E0FE.3020708@candelatech.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: mchan@broadcom.com Return-path: To: "'netdev@oss.sgi.com'" Sender: netdev-bounce@oss.sgi.com Errors-to: netdev-bounce@oss.sgi.com List-Id: netdev.vger.kernel.org Hello! I have a 4-port NIC by silicom-usa.com that uses the BCM5704 (rev 10) chipset. It's running in a PCI-X bus (100 or 133Mhz). CPUs are dual xeon 2.8Ghz, 1MB cache, 1GB RAM, etc). Kernel is 2.6.11 + my hacks (no hacks to tg3, minor hacks to e1000 and other parts of the networking stacks). I am trying to bridge as much traffic as possible across two interfaces, using a proprietary kernel module. The network traffic is 1514 byte packets, generated by a modified version of pktgen running on another machine with similar hardware (Intel NICs). With the BCM NIC I can get about 600Mbps in one direction and about 800Mbps in the other..with a great deal of dropped packets. With the Intel 4-port NIC (same machine, different PCI slot, and also from Silicom-usa.com) I can get 900+Mbps in both directions with virtually no drops. So: * Is the BCM5704 chipset/driver really that much slower? * Is there some information on tuning the tg3 somewhere? (I didn't see a Documentation/networking/tg3.txt file, for instance) * Is there a way to verify the bus speed that the NIC is running at? (ethtool -d ethX gives lots of meaningless (to me) hex) Please let me know if more information would be useful. Thanks, Ben -- Ben Greear Candela Technologies Inc http://www.candelatech.com