Commits
Jacob Keller committed 0a2c7722be1
i40e/i40evf: remove ULTRA latency mode
Since commit c56625d59726 ("i40e/i40evf: change dynamic interrupt
thresholds") a new higher latency ITR setting called I40E_ULTRA_LATENCY
was added with a cryptic comment about how it was meant for adjusting Rx
more aggressively when streaming small packets.
This mode was attempting to calculate packets per second and then kick
in when we have a huge number of small packets.
Unfortunately, the ULTRA setting was kicking in for workloads it wasn't
intended for including single-thread UDP_STREAM workloads.
This wasn't caught for a variety of reasons. First, the ip_defrag
routines were improved somewhat which makes the UDP_STREAM test still
reasonable at 10GbE, even when dropped down to 8k interrupts a second.
Additionally, some other obvious workloads appear to work fine, such
as TCP_STREAM.
The number 40k doesn't make sense for a number of reasons. First, we
absolutely can do more than 40k packets per second. Second, we calculate
the value inline in an integer, which sometimes can overflow resulting
in using incorrect values.
If we fix this overflow it makes it even more likely that we'll enter
ULTRA mode which is the opposite of what we want.
The ULTRA mode was added originally as a way to reduce CPU utilization
during a small packet workload where we weren't keeping up anyways. It
should never have been kicking in during these other workloads.
Given the issues outlined above, let's remove the ULTRA latency mode. If
necessary, a better solution to the CPU utilization issue for small
packet workloads will be added in a future patch.
Signed-off-by: Jacob Keller <jacob.e.keller@intel.com>
Tested-by: Andrew Bowers <andrewx.bowers@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Jeff Kirsher <jeffrey.t.kirsher@intel.com>