[PATCH] ath10k: add modparam 'hw_csum' to make HW checksum configurable

[Felix Fietkau]

On 2015-12-17 23:01, Peter Oh wrote:
> 
> On 12/16/2015 03:59 PM, Felix Fietkau wrote:
>> On 2015-12-17 00:50, Peter Oh wrote:
>>> On 12/16/2015 01:54 PM, Felix Fietkau wrote:
>>>> On 2015-12-16 22:19, Peter Oh wrote:
>>>>> On 12/16/2015 12:53 PM, Felix Fietkau wrote:
>>>>>> On 2015-12-16 21:46, Peter Oh wrote:
>>>>>>> On 12/16/2015 12:35 PM, Felix Fietkau wrote:
>>>>>>>> On 2015-12-16 21:29, Peter Oh wrote:
>>>>>>>>> On 12/16/2015 10:27 AM, Felix Fietkau wrote:
>>>>>>>>>> On 2015-12-16 19:20, Peter Oh wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>> Some hardwares such as QCA988X and QCA99X0 doesn't have
>>>>>>>>>>> capability of checksum offload when frame formats are not
>>>>>>>>>>> suitable for it such as Mesh frame.
>>>>>>>>>>> Hence add a module parameter, hw_csum, to make checksum offload
>>>>>>>>>>> configurable during module registration time.
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> Signed-off-by: Peter Oh <poh at qca.qualcomm.com>
>>>>>>>>>> How about instead of inventing yet another crappy module parameter, you
>>>>>>>>>> call skb_checksum_help() in the driver in cases where the hardware is
>>>>>>>>>> unable to offload the checksum calculation.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> That way the user has to worry about less driver specific hackery ;)
>>>>>>>>> That will be good option for hardware not supporting HW checksum, but I
>>>>>>>>> mind that using the function will add more workload per every packet on
>>>>>>>>> critical data path when HW supports checksum resulting in throughput down.
>>>>>>>> I didn't mean calling it for every single frame in the data path.
>>>>>>>> What I'm suggesting is calling it selectively only for mesh frames, or
>>>>>>>> any other frames that the hardware cannot offload, and leaving the rest
>>>>>>>> for the hardware to process.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> There should be no performance difference between disabling checksum
>>>>>>>> offload and calling skb_checksum_help from the driver.
>>>>>>> To call it selectively for Mesh frame or interface, we need to add it on
>>>>>>> mac80211 layer such as ieee80211_build_hdr() since driver layer does not
>>>>>>> care the interface type in data path.
>>>>>> No need to change mac80211 - it only touches the headers, and
>>>>>> skb_checksum_help does not care about that. The skb has enough
>>>>>> information for it to find the right range to calculate the checksum and
>>>>>> the place to store it.
>>>>> If mentioned to use the function to mesh frame only without touching
>>>>> mac80211, then how do you suggest it to apply it only to mesh frame
>>>>> without interfere other data frames?
>>>>> Can you share your example?
>>>> It's trivial - in ath10k_tx you do this:
>>>>
>>>> if (vif->type == NL80211_IFTYPE_MESH_POINT &&
>>>>       skb->ip_summed == CHECKSUM_PARTIAL)
>>>> 	skb_checksum_help(skb);
>>> Thank you Felix for the quick response.
>>> I agree on your user experience opinion,
>>> but what do you think when ath10k has a new chip supporting HW checksum
>>> for Mesh?
>> Then you simply update the checks. What's the big deal?
> keep adding condition to such data path is not a good option.
> I also considered again about user experiences and reached to that this 
> patch won't disturb user experience since the products will ship with 
> proper module settings. for instance the parameter will be turned on if 
> product support it other wise will be turned off as they shipped, so 
> that users don't need to touch it.
I think the point you were missing is the one that there is no such
thing as a proper setting for this module parameter, since it doesn't
really depend much on the hardware or the product, but on the wifi mode
that you are using.

> In addition, for enterprise customers, they do care even a very small 
> performance drop or enhancement especially when they are running BMT 
> among vendors.
> So we need to avoid adding extra codes in data path in my opinion.
The regular data tx path already checks ar->dev_flags to decide whether
to use raw mode or not. This means that this part of the data structure
is already cached. The vif type is also cached, since it's accessed in
the same part of the function.
Because of that, the impact of adding an extra check even for a hardware
capability will be so low, that I'm pretty sure you will not be able to
measure it. And even if it were measurable, it's probably quite easy to
find a few places to optimize

I find the tradeoff you are making very odd: For users that don't know
about the module parameter (depending on the default value) it either
just randomly doesn't work in mesh or always runs with degraded
performance. All this to save adding a check that will be completely
irrelevant for performance, since it won't result in any extra cache
stalls (which are the typical bottleneck in the data path).

- Felix