Re: [PATCH v4 bpf-next 0/8] bpf_prog_pack followup

[Luis Chamberlain]

On Mon, Jun 20, 2022 at 07:11:45PM +0800, Aaron Lu wrote:
> Hi Song,
> 
> On Fri, May 20, 2022 at 04:57:50PM -0700, Song Liu wrote:
> 
> ... ...
> 
> > The primary goal of bpf_prog_pack is to reduce iTLB miss rate and reduce
> > direct memory mapping fragmentation. This leads to non-trivial performance
> > improvements.
> >
> > For our web service production benchmark, bpf_prog_pack on 4kB pages
> > gives 0.5% to 0.7% more throughput than not using bpf_prog_pack.
> > bpf_prog_pack on 2MB pages 0.6% to 0.9% more throughput than not using
> > bpf_prog_pack. Note that 0.5% is a huge improvement for our fleet. I
> > believe this is also significant for other companies with many thousand
> > servers.
> >
> 
> I'm evaluationg performance impact due to direct memory mapping
> fragmentation 

BTW how exactly are you doing this?

  Luis

> and seeing the above, I wonder: is the performance improve
> mostly due to prog pack and hugepage instead of less direct mapping
> fragmentation?
> 
> I can understand that when progs are packed together, iTLB miss rate will
> be reduced and thus, performance can be improved. But I don't see
> immediately how direct mapping fragmentation can impact performance since
> the bpf code are running from the module alias addresses, not the direct
> mapping addresses IIUC?
> 
> I appreciate it if you can shed some light on performance impact direct
> mapping fragmentation can cause, thanks.