Re: [RFC PATCH net-next V2 0/6] XDP rx handler

[Jason Wang]

On 2018å08æ14æ 08:32, Alexei Starovoitov wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 13, 2018 at 11:17:24AM +0800, Jason Wang wrote:
> > Hi:
> >
> > This series tries to implement XDP support for rx hanlder. This would
> > be useful for doing native XDP on stacked device like macvlan, bridge
> > or even bond.
> >
> > The idea is simple, let stacked device register a XDP rx handler. And
> > when driver return XDP_PASS, it will call a new helper xdp_do_pass()
> > which will try to pass XDP buff to XDP rx handler directly. XDP rx
> > handler may then decide how to proceed, it could consume the buff, ask
> > driver to drop the packet or ask the driver to fallback to normal skb
> > path.
> >
> > A sample XDP rx handler was implemented for macvlan. And virtio-net
> > (mergeable buffer case) was converted to call xdp_do_pass() as an
> > example. For ease comparision, generic XDP support for rx handler was
> > also implemented.
> >
> > Compared to skb mode XDP on macvlan, native XDP on macvlan (XDP_DROP)
> > shows about 83% improvement.
> I'm missing the motiviation for this.
> It seems performance of such solution is ~1M packet per second.

Notice it was measured by virtio-net which is kind of slow.

> What would be a real life use case for such feature ?

I had another run on top of 10G mlx4 and macvlan:

XDP_DROP on mlx4: 14.0Mpps
XDP_DROP on macvlan: 10.05Mpps

Perf shows macvlan_hash_lookup() and indirect call to 
macvlan_handle_xdp() are the reasons for the number drop. I think the 
numbers are acceptable. And we could try more optimizations on top.

So here's real life use case is trying to have an fast XDP path for rx 
handler based device:

- For containers, we can run XDP for macvlan (~70% of wire speed). This 
allows a container specific policy.
- For VM, we can implement macvtap XDP rx handler on top. This allow us 
to forward packet to VM without building skb in the setup of macvtap.
- The idea could be used by other rx handler based device like bridge, 
we may have a XDP fast forwarding path for bridge.

> Another concern is that XDP users expect to get line rate performance
> and native XDP delivers it. 'generic XDP' is a fallback only
> mechanism to operate on NICs that don't have native XDP yet.

So I can replace generic XDP TX routine with a native one for macvlan.

> Toshiaki's veth XDP work fits XDP philosophy and allows
> high speed networking to be done inside containers after veth.
> It's trying to get to line rate inside container.

This is one of the goal of this series as well. I agree veth XDP work 
looks pretty fine, but it only work for a specific setup I believe since 
it depends on XDP_REDIRECT which is supported by few drivers (and 
there's no VF driver support). And in order to make it work for a end 
user, the XDP program still need logic like hash(map) lookup to 
determine the destination veth.

> This XDP rx handler stuff is destined to stay at 1Mpps speeds forever
> and the users will get confused with forever slow modes of XDP.
>
> Please explain the problem you're trying to solve.
> "look, here I can to XDP on top of macvlan" is not an explanation of the problem.

Thanks