[RFC] skb_free_datagram() doing something expensive ?

[Eric Dumazet <dada1@cosmosbay.com>]

Hi all

I noticed high contention on udp_memory_allocated on a typical VOIP application.

(Now that oprofile correctly runs on my machine :) )

I can see that skb_free_datagram() is :

void skb_free_datagram(struct sock *sk, struct sk_buff *skb)
{
        kfree_skb(skb);
        sk_mem_reclaim(sk);
}

So each time an UDP packet is received, we must touch udp_memory_allocated

Each time application reads a packet, we call sk_mem_reclaim() and touch again udp_memory_allocated.

Surely this cannot be correct ?

If this is correct, time is to resurrect a patch to make proto->memory_allocated a percpu_counter
or something to have a percpu reserve of say 64 or 128 pages to avoid cache line trashing...

tcp_memory_allocated do not have this problem, since tcp carefully calls sk_mem_reclaim(sk) only on
selected paths, not on fast path.

Thanks