Re: [PATCH 1/4] softirq: implement IRQ flood detection mechanism

From: Sagi Grimberg
Date: Fri Sep 20 2019 - 13:09:56 EST



It seems like we're attempting to stay in irq context for as long as we
can instead of scheduling to softirq/thread context if we have more than
a minimal amount of work to do. Without at least understanding why
softirq/thread degrades us so much this code seems like the wrong
approach to me. Interrupt context will always be faster, but it is
not a sufficient reason to spend as much time as possible there, is it?

If extra latency is added in IO completion path, this latency will be
introduced in the submission path, because the hw queue depth is fixed,
which is often small. Especially in case of multiple submission vs.
single(shared) completion, the whole hw queue tags can be exhausted
easily.

This is why the patch is reaping the first batch from hard-irq, but only
if it has more will defer to softirq. So I'm not sure the short QD use
case applies here...

I guess no such effect for networking IO.

Maybe, maybe not...