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  • Eric Dumazet's avatar
    net: Introduce skb_orphan_try() · fc6055a5
    Eric Dumazet authored
    
    
    Transmitted skb might be attached to a socket and a destructor, for
    memory accounting purposes.
    
    Traditionally, this destructor is called at tx completion time, when skb
    is freed.
    
    When tx completion is performed by another cpu than the sender, this
    forces some cache lines to change ownership. XPS was an attempt to give
    tx completion to initial cpu.
    
    David idea is to call destructor right before giving skb to device (call
    to ndo_start_xmit()). Because device queues are usually small, orphaning
    skb before tx completion is not a big deal. Some drivers already do
    this, we could do it in upper level.
    
    There is one known exception to this early orphaning, called tx
    timestamping. It needs to keep a reference to socket until device can
    give a hardware or software timestamp.
    
    This patch adds a skb_orphan_try() helper, to centralize all exceptions
    to early orphaning in one spot, and use it in dev_hard_start_xmit().
    
    "tbench 16" results on a Nehalem machine (2 X5570  @ 2.93GHz)
    before: Throughput 4428.9 MB/sec 16 procs
    after: Throughput 4448.14 MB/sec 16 procs
    
    UDP should get even better results, its destructor being more complex,
    since SOCK_USE_WRITE_QUEUE is not set (four atomic ops instead of one)
    
    Signed-off-by: default avatarEric Dumazet <eric.dumazet@gmail.com>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
    fc6055a5