[RFC 0/7] Add support to process rx packets in thread

[Florian Fainelli]

On 7/23/20 11:20 PM, Rakesh Pillai wrote:
> 
> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Florian Fainelli <f.fainelli at gmail.com>
>> Sent: Friday, July 24, 2020 12:33 AM
>> To: Rakesh Pillai <pillair at codeaurora.org>; 'Andrew Lunn'
>> <andrew at lunn.ch>
>> Cc: ath10k at lists.infradead.org; linux-wireless at vger.kernel.org; linux-
>> kernel at vger.kernel.org; kvalo at codeaurora.org; johannes at sipsolutions.net;
>> davem at davemloft.net; kuba at kernel.org; netdev at vger.kernel.org;
>> dianders at chromium.org; evgreen at chromium.org
>> Subject: Re: [RFC 0/7] Add support to process rx packets in thread
>>
>> On 7/23/20 11:21 AM, Rakesh Pillai wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: Florian Fainelli <f.fainelli at gmail.com>
>>>> Sent: Tuesday, July 21, 2020 11:35 PM
>>>> To: Andrew Lunn <andrew at lunn.ch>; Rakesh Pillai
>> <pillair at codeaurora.org>
>>>> Cc: ath10k at lists.infradead.org; linux-wireless at vger.kernel.org; linux-
>>>> kernel at vger.kernel.org; kvalo at codeaurora.org;
>> johannes at sipsolutions.net;
>>>> davem at davemloft.net; kuba at kernel.org; netdev at vger.kernel.org;
>>>> dianders at chromium.org; evgreen at chromium.org
>>>> Subject: Re: [RFC 0/7] Add support to process rx packets in thread
>>>>
>>>> On 7/21/20 10:25 AM, Andrew Lunn wrote:
>>>>> On Tue, Jul 21, 2020 at 10:44:19PM +0530, Rakesh Pillai wrote:
>>>>>> NAPI gets scheduled on the CPU core which got the
>>>>>> interrupt. The linux scheduler cannot move it to a
>>>>>> different core, even if the CPU on which NAPI is running
>>>>>> is heavily loaded. This can lead to degraded wifi
>>>>>> performance when running traffic at peak data rates.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> A thread on the other hand can be moved to different
>>>>>> CPU cores, if the one on which its running is heavily
>>>>>> loaded. During high incoming data traffic, this gives
>>>>>> better performance, since the thread can be moved to a
>>>>>> less loaded or sometimes even a more powerful CPU core
>>>>>> to account for the required CPU performance in order
>>>>>> to process the incoming packets.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> This patch series adds the support to use a high priority
>>>>>> thread to process the incoming packets, as opposed to
>>>>>> everything being done in NAPI context.
>>>>>
>>>>> I don't see why this problem is limited to the ath10k driver. I expect
>>>>> it applies to all drivers using NAPI. So shouldn't you be solving this
>>>>> in the NAPI core? Allow a driver to request the NAPI core uses a
>>>>> thread?
>>>>
>>>> What's more, you should be able to configure interrupt affinity to steer
>>>> RX processing onto a desired CPU core, is not that working for you
>>>> somehow?
>>>
>>> Hi Florian,
>>> Yes, the affinity of IRQ does work for me.
>>> But the affinity of IRQ does not happen runtime based on load.
>>
>> It can if you also run irqbalance.
> 
> 
> Hi Florian,
> 
> Is it some kernel feature ?  Sorry I am not aware of this ?
> I know it can be done in userspace.

The kernel interface is /proc/<irq>/smp_affinity and the users-space
implementation resides here:

https://github.com/Irqbalance/irqbalance
-- 
Florian