From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Rick Jones Subject: Re: [RFC] don't copy the whole table to all the other CPUs Date: Wed, 17 Nov 2010 10:03:56 -0800 Message-ID: <4CE4190C.800@hp.com> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Patrick McHardy , Netfilter Developer Mailing List To: Changli Gao Return-path: Received: from g5t0009.atlanta.hp.com ([15.192.0.46]:9950 "EHLO g5t0009.atlanta.hp.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S935136Ab0KQSD6 (ORCPT ); Wed, 17 Nov 2010 13:03:58 -0500 In-Reply-To: Sender: netfilter-devel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: Changli Gao wrote: > When reviewing the iptables code, I find there is one exact copy of > table on every possible CPU for parallel processing. However, only > counters are private, and the others are the same. It is a wast of > memory. I know the current implementation maybe good for NUMA, but I > don't think NUMA is common, and I doubt its benefit. I'll try to > convert the code use one shared table, but private counters. > > Any comment? Others have already commented on how the code is changing and whether or not what is done is necessary for good performance in the face of NUMA, but I wanted to point-out that NUMA is quite common. Just in the x86 space, virtually anything with two or more sockets sold starting with Nehalem-EP (?) is a NUMA system, and one can go farther back than that when one goes to Barcelona. Per-processor memory controllers and more than one processor implies NUMA. rick jones