Cpus serving NIC interrupts and specifically TX completions are often trapped in also restarting a busy qdisc (because qdisc was stopped by BQL or the driver's own flow control). When they call netdev_tx_completed_queue() or netif_tx_wake_queue(), they call __netif_schedule() so that the queue can be run later from net_tx_action() (involving NET_TX_SOFTIRQ) Quite often, by the time the cpu reaches net_tx_action(), another cpu grabbed the qdisc spinlock from __dev_xmit_skb(), and we spend too much time spinning on this lock. We can detect in __netif_schedule() if a cpu is already at a specific point in __dev_xmit_skb() where we have the guarantee the queue will be run. This patch gives a 13 % increase of throughput on an IDPF NIC (200Gbit), 32 TX qeues, sending UDP packets of 120 bytes. This also helps __qdisc_run() to not force a NET_TX_SOFTIRQ if another thread is waiting in __dev_xmit_skb() Before: sar -n DEV 5 5|grep eth1|grep Average Average: eth1 1496.44 52191462.56 210.00 13369396.90 0.00 0.00 0.00 54.76 After: sar -n DEV 5 5|grep eth1|grep Average Average: eth1 1457.88 59363099.96 205.08 15206384.35 0.00 0.00 0.00 62.29 Signed-off-by: Eric Dumazet --- net/core/dev.c | 7 +++++++ 1 file changed, 7 insertions(+) diff --git a/net/core/dev.c b/net/core/dev.c index 821e7c718924405d0a7c10e41f677b98aa2d070b..9482b905c66a53501ad3b737ad4461533b9e7a4e 100644 --- a/net/core/dev.c +++ b/net/core/dev.c @@ -3373,6 +3373,13 @@ static void __netif_reschedule(struct Qdisc *q) void __netif_schedule(struct Qdisc *q) { + /* If q->defer_list is not empty, at least one thread is + * in __dev_xmit_skb() before llist_del_all(&q->defer_list). + * This thread will attempt to run the queue. + */ + if (!llist_empty(&q->defer_list)) + return; + if (!test_and_set_bit(__QDISC_STATE_SCHED, &q->state)) __netif_reschedule(q); } -- 2.51.0.858.gf9c4a03a3a-goog