Stefano Garzarella
2023-Jun-26 16:15 UTC
[RFC PATCH v4 00/17] vsock: MSG_ZEROCOPY flag support
On Sat, Jun 03, 2023 at 11:49:22PM +0300, Arseniy Krasnov wrote:>Hello, > > DESCRIPTION > >this is MSG_ZEROCOPY feature support for virtio/vsock. I tried to follow >current implementation for TCP as much as possible: > >1) Sender must enable SO_ZEROCOPY flag to use this feature. Without this > flag, data will be sent in "classic" copy manner and MSG_ZEROCOPY > flag will be ignored (e.g. without completion). > >2) Kernel uses completions from socket's error queue. Single completion > for single tx syscall (or it can merge several completions to single > one). I used already implemented logic for MSG_ZEROCOPY support: > 'msg_zerocopy_realloc()' etc. > >Difference with copy way is not significant. During packet allocation, >non-linear skb is created and filled with pinned user pages. >There are also some updates for vhost and guest parts of transport - in >both cases i've added handling of non-linear skb for virtio part. vhost >copies data from such skb to the guest's rx virtio buffers. In the guest, >virtio transport fills tx virtio queue with pages from skb. > >Head of this patchset is: >https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/net-next.git/commit/?id=d20dd0ea14072e8a90ff864b2c1603bd68920b4b > > >This version has several limits/problems: > >1) As this feature totally depends on transport, there is no way (or it > is difficult) to check whether transport is able to handle it or not > during SO_ZEROCOPY setting. Seems I need to call AF_VSOCK specific > setsockopt callback from setsockopt callback for SOL_SOCKET, but this > leads to lock problem, because both AF_VSOCK and SOL_SOCKET callback > are not considered to be called from each other. So in current version > SO_ZEROCOPY is set successfully to any type (e.g. transport) of > AF_VSOCK socket, but if transport does not support MSG_ZEROCOPY, > tx routine will fail with EOPNOTSUPP. > > ^^^ > This is still no resolved :( > >2) When MSG_ZEROCOPY is used, for each tx system call we need to enqueue > one completion. In each completion there is flag which shows how tx > was performed: zerocopy or copy. This leads that whole message must > be send in zerocopy or copy way - we can't send part of message with > copying and rest of message with zerocopy mode (or vice versa). Now, > we need to account vsock credit logic, e.g. we can't send whole data > once - only allowed number of bytes could sent at any moment. In case > of copying way there is no problem as in worst case we can send single > bytes, but zerocopy is more complex because smallest transmission > unit is single page. So if there is not enough space at peer's side > to send integer number of pages (at least one) - we will wait, thus > stalling tx side. To overcome this problem i've added simple rule - > zerocopy is possible only when there is enough space at another side > for whole message (to check, that current 'msghdr' was already used > in previous tx iterations i use 'iov_offset' field of it's iov iter). > > ^^^ > Discussed as ok during v2. Link: > https://lore.kernel.org/netdev/23guh3txkghxpgcrcjx7h62qsoj3xgjhfzgtbmqp2slrz3rxr4 at zya2z7kwt75l/ > >3) loopback transport is not supported, because it requires to implement > non-linear skb handling in dequeue logic (as we "send" fragged skb > and "receive" it from the same queue). I'm going to implement it in > next versions. > > ^^^ fixed in v2 > >4) Current implementation sets max length of packet to 64KB. IIUC this > is due to 'kmalloc()' allocated data buffers. I think, in case of > MSG_ZEROCOPY this value could be increased, because 'kmalloc()' is > not touched for data - user space pages are used as buffers. Also > this limit trims every message which is > 64KB, thus such messages > will be send in copy mode due to 'iov_offset' check in 2). > > ^^^ fixed in v2 > > PATCHSET STRUCTURE > >Patchset has the following structure: >1) Handle non-linear skbuff on receive in virtio/vhost. >2) Handle non-linear skbuff on send in virtio/vhost. >3) Updates for AF_VSOCK. >4) Enable MSG_ZEROCOPY support on transports. >5) Tests/tools/docs updates. > > PERFORMANCE > >Performance: it is a little bit tricky to compare performance between >copy and zerocopy transmissions. In zerocopy way we need to wait when >user buffers will be released by kernel, so it is like synchronous >path (wait until device driver will process it), while in copy way we >can feed data to kernel as many as we want, don't care about device >driver. So I compared only time which we spend in the 'send()' syscall. >Then if this value will be combined with total number of transmitted >bytes, we can get Gbit/s parameter. Also to avoid tx stalls due to not >enough credit, receiver allocates same amount of space as sender needs. > >Sender: >./vsock_perf --sender <CID> --buf-size <buf size> --bytes 256M [--zc] > >Receiver: >./vsock_perf --vsk-size 256M > >I run tests on two setups: desktop with Core i7 - I use this PC for >development and in this case guest is nested guest, and host is normal >guest. Another hardware is some embedded board with Atom - here I don't >have nested virtualization - host runs on hw, and guest is normal guest. > >G2H transmission (values are Gbit/s): > > Core i7 with nested guest. Atom with normal guest. > >*-------------------------------* *-------------------------------* >| | | | | | | | >| buf size | copy | zerocopy | | buf size | copy | zerocopy | >| | | | | | | | >*-------------------------------* *-------------------------------* >| 4KB | 3 | 10 | | 4KB | 0.8 | 1.9 | >*-------------------------------* *-------------------------------* >| 32KB | 20 | 61 | | 32KB | 6.8 | 20.2 | >*-------------------------------* *-------------------------------* >| 256KB | 33 | 244 | | 256KB | 7.8 | 55 | >*-------------------------------* *-------------------------------* >| 1M | 30 | 373 | | 1M | 7 | 95 | >*-------------------------------* *-------------------------------* >| 8M | 22 | 475 | | 8M | 7 | 114 | >*-------------------------------* *-------------------------------* > >H2G: > > Core i7 with nested guest. Atom with normal guest. > >*-------------------------------* *-------------------------------* >| | | | | | | | >| buf size | copy | zerocopy | | buf size | copy | zerocopy | >| | | | | | | | >*-------------------------------* *-------------------------------* >| 4KB | 20 | 10 | | 4KB | 4.37 | 3 | >*-------------------------------* *-------------------------------* >| 32KB | 37 | 75 | | 32KB | 11 | 18 | >*-------------------------------* *-------------------------------* >| 256KB | 44 | 299 | | 256KB | 11 | 62 | >*-------------------------------* *-------------------------------* >| 1M | 28 | 335 | | 1M | 9 | 77 | >*-------------------------------* *-------------------------------* >| 8M | 27 | 417 | | 8M | 9.35 | 115 | >*-------------------------------* *-------------------------------* > > * Let's look to the first line of both tables - where copy is better > than zerocopy. I analyzed this case more deeply and found that > bottleneck is function 'vhost_work_queue()'. With 4K buffer size, > caller spends too much time in it with zerocopy mode (comparing to > copy mode). This happens only with 4K buffer size. This function just > calls 'wake_up_process()' and its internal logic does not depends on > skb, so i think potential reason (may be) is interval between two > calls of this function (e.g. how often it is called). Note, that > 'vhost_work_queue()' differs from the same function at guest's side of > transport: 'virtio_transport_send_pkt()' uses 'queue_work()' which > i think is more optimized for worker purposes, than direct call to > 'wake_up_process()'. But again - this is just my assumption.Thanks for the analysis, however for small payloads it makes sense that the cost might be too high that optimization does not bring benefits.> >Loopback: > > Core i7 with nested guest. Atom with normal guest. > >*-------------------------------* *-------------------------------* >| | | | | | | | >| buf size | copy | zerocopy | | buf size | copy | zerocopy | >| | | | | | | | >*-------------------------------* *-------------------------------* >| 4KB | 8 | 7 | | 4KB | 1.8 | 1.3 | >*-------------------------------* *-------------------------------* >| 32KB | 38 | 44 | | 32KB | 10 | 10 | >*-------------------------------* *-------------------------------* >| 256KB | 55 | 168 | | 256KB | 15 | 36 | >*-------------------------------* *-------------------------------* >| 1M | 53 | 250 | | 1M | 12 | 45 | >*-------------------------------* *-------------------------------* >| 8M | 40 | 344 | | 8M | 11 | 74 | >*-------------------------------* *-------------------------------* > >I analyzed performace difference more deeply for the following setup: >server: ./vsock_perf --vsk-size 16M >client: ./vsock_perf --sender 2 --bytes 16M --buf-size 16K/4K [--zc] > >In other words I send 16M of data from guest to host in copy/zerocopy >modes and with two different sizes of buffer - 4K and 64K. Let's see >to tx path for both modes - it consists of two steps: > >copy: >1) Allocate skb of buffer's length. >2) Copy data to skb from buffer. > >zerocopy: >1) Allocate skb with header space only. >2) Pin pages of the buffer and insert them to skb. > >I measured average number of ns (returned by 'ktime_get()') for each >step above: >1) Skb allocation (for both copy and zerocopy modes). >2) For copy mode in 'memcpy_to_msg()' - copying. >3) For zerocopy mode in '__zerocopy_sg_from_iter()' - pinning. > >Here are results for copy mode: >*-------------------------------------* >| buf | skb alloc | 'memcpy_to_msg()' | >*-------------------------------------* >| | | | >| 64K | 5000ns | 25000ns | >| | | | >*-------------------------------------* >| | | | >| 4K | 800ns | 2200ns | >| | | | >*-------------------------------------* > >Here are results for zerocopy mode: >*-----------------------------------------------* >| buf | skb alloc | '__zerocopy_sg_from_iter()' | >*-----------------------------------------------* >| | | | >| 64K | 250ns | 3500ns | >| | | | >*-----------------------------------------------* >| | | | >| 4K | 250ns | 3000ns | >| | | | >*-----------------------------------------------* > >I guess that reason of zerocopy performance is low overhead for page >pinning: there is big difference between 4K and 64K in case of copying >(25000 vs 2200), but in pinning case - just 3000 vs 3500. > >So, zerocopy is faster than classic copy mode, but of course it requires >specific architecture of application due to user pages pinning, buffer >size and alignment.Makes sense!> > NOTES > >If host fails to send data with "Cannot allocate memory", check value >/proc/sys/net/core/optmem_max - it is accounted during completion skb >allocation. Try to update it to for example 1M and try send again: >"echo 1048576 > /proc/sys/net/core/optmem_max" (as root). > > TESTING > >This patchset includes set of tests for MSG_ZEROCOPY feature. I tried to >cover new code as much as possible so there are different cases for >MSG_ZEROCOPY transmissions: with disabled SO_ZEROCOPY and several io >vector types (different sizes, alignments, with unmapped pages). I also >run tests with loopback transport and run vsockmon. In v3 i've added >io_uring test as separated application. > > LET'S SPLIT PATCHSET TO MAKE REVIEW EASIER > >In v3 Stefano Garzarella <sgarzare at redhat.com> asked to split this patchset >for several parts, because it looks too big for review. I think in this >version (v4) we can do it in the following way: > >[0001 - 0005] - this is preparation for virtio/vhost part. >[0006 - 0009] - this is preparation for AF_VSOCK part. >[0010 - 0013] - these patches allows to trigger logic from the previous > two parts. >[0014 - rest] - updates for doc, tests, utils. This part doesn't touch > kernel code and looks not critical.Yeah, I like this split, but I'd include 14 in the (10, 13) group. I have reviewed most of them and I think we are well on our way :-) I've already seen that Bobby suggested changes for v5, so I'll review that version better. Great work so far! Thanks, Stefano