[PATCH net-next] net: set default rss queues num to physical cores / 2

From: Íñigo Huguet
Date: Tue Mar 15 2022 - 05:19:04 EST


Network drivers can call to netif_get_num_default_rss_queues to get the
default number of receive queues to use. Right now, this default number
is min(8, num_online_cpus()).

Instead, as suggested by Jakub, use the number of physical cores divided
by 2 as a way to avoid wasting CPU resources and to avoid using both CPU
threads, but still allowing to scale for high-end processors with many
cores.

As an exception, select 2 queues for processors with 2 cores, because
otherwise it won't take any advantage of RSS despite being SMP capable.

Tested: Processor Intel Xeon E5-2620 (2 sockets, 6 cores/socket, 2
threads/core). NIC Broadcom NetXtreme II BCM57810 (10GBps). Ran some
tests with `perf stat iperf3 -R`, with parallelisms of 1, 8 and 24,
getting the following results:
- Number of queues: 6 (instead of 8)
- Network throughput: not affected
- CPU usage: utilized 0.05-0.12 CPUs more than before (having 24 CPUs
this is only 0.2-0.5% higher)
- Reduced the number of context switches by 7-50%, being more noticeable
when using a higher number of parallel threads.

Suggested-by: Jakub Kicinski <kuba@xxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Íñigo Huguet <ihuguet@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
include/linux/netdevice.h | 1 -
net/core/dev.c | 20 ++++++++++++++++----
2 files changed, 16 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)

diff --git a/include/linux/netdevice.h b/include/linux/netdevice.h
index 0d994710b335..db9874ed79d9 100644
--- a/include/linux/netdevice.h
+++ b/include/linux/netdevice.h
@@ -3664,7 +3664,6 @@ static inline unsigned int get_netdev_rx_queue_index(
}
#endif

-#define DEFAULT_MAX_NUM_RSS_QUEUES (8)
int netif_get_num_default_rss_queues(void);

enum skb_free_reason {
diff --git a/net/core/dev.c b/net/core/dev.c
index 75bab5b0dbae..8e0cc5f2020d 100644
--- a/net/core/dev.c
+++ b/net/core/dev.c
@@ -2990,13 +2990,25 @@ EXPORT_SYMBOL(netif_set_real_num_queues);
/**
* netif_get_num_default_rss_queues - default number of RSS queues
*
- * This routine should set an upper limit on the number of RSS queues
- * used by default by multiqueue devices.
+ * Default value is the number of physical cores if there are only 1 or 2, or
+ * divided by 2 if there are more.
*/
int netif_get_num_default_rss_queues(void)
{
- return is_kdump_kernel() ?
- 1 : min_t(int, DEFAULT_MAX_NUM_RSS_QUEUES, num_online_cpus());
+ cpumask_var_t cpus;
+ int cpu, count = 0;
+
+ if (unlikely(is_kdump_kernel() || !zalloc_cpumask_var(&cpus, GFP_KERNEL)))
+ return 1;
+
+ cpumask_copy(cpus, cpu_online_mask);
+ for_each_cpu(cpu, cpus) {
+ ++count;
+ cpumask_andnot(cpus, cpus, topology_sibling_cpumask(cpu));
+ }
+ free_cpumask_var(cpus);
+
+ return count > 2 ? DIV_ROUND_UP(count, 2) : count;
}
EXPORT_SYMBOL(netif_get_num_default_rss_queues);

--
2.34.1