Virtualization - Jan 2022 - [PATCH v1] vhost: cache avail index in vhost_enable_notify()

On Fri, Jan 14, 2022 at 10:05:08AM +0100, Stefano Garzarella
wrote:
> In vhost_enable_notify() we enable the notifications and we read
> the avail index to check if new buffers have become available in
> the meantime.
> 
> We are not caching the avail index, so when the device will call
> vhost_get_vq_desc(), it will find the old value in the cache and
> it will read the avail index again.
> 
> It would be better to refresh the cache every time we read avail
> index, so let's change vhost_enable_notify() caching the value in
> `avail_idx` and compare it with `last_avail_idx` to check if there
> are new buffers available.
> 
> Anyway, we don't expect a significant performance boost because
> the above path is not very common, indeed vhost_enable_notify()
> is often called with unlikely(), expecting that avail index has
> not been updated.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Stefano Garzarella <sgarzare at redhat.com>
... and can in theory even hurt due to an extra memory write.
So ... performance test restults pls?
> ---
> v1:
> - improved the commit description [MST, Jason]
> ---
>  drivers/vhost/vhost.c | 3 ++-
>  1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
> 
> diff --git a/drivers/vhost/vhost.c b/drivers/vhost/vhost.c
> index 59edb5a1ffe2..07363dff559e 100644
> --- a/drivers/vhost/vhost.c
> +++ b/drivers/vhost/vhost.c
> @@ -2543,8 +2543,9 @@ bool vhost_enable_notify(struct vhost_dev *dev,
struct vhost_virtqueue *vq)
>  		       &vq->avail->idx, r);
>  		return false;
>  	}
> +	vq->avail_idx = vhost16_to_cpu(vq, avail_idx);
>  
> -	return vhost16_to_cpu(vq, avail_idx) != vq->avail_idx;
> +	return vq->avail_idx != vq->last_avail_idx;
>  }
>  EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(vhost_enable_notify);
>  
> -- 
> 2.31.1

On Fri, Jan 14, 2022 at 07:45:35AM -0500, Michael S. Tsirkin
wrote:
>On Fri, Jan 14, 2022 at 10:05:08AM +0100, Stefano Garzarella wrote:
>> In vhost_enable_notify() we enable the notifications and we read
>> the avail index to check if new buffers have become available in
>> the meantime.
>>
>> We are not caching the avail index, so when the device will call
>> vhost_get_vq_desc(), it will find the old value in the cache and
>> it will read the avail index again.
>>
>> It would be better to refresh the cache every time we read avail
>> index, so let's change vhost_enable_notify() caching the value in
>> `avail_idx` and compare it with `last_avail_idx` to check if there
>> are new buffers available.
>>
>> Anyway, we don't expect a significant performance boost because
>> the above path is not very common, indeed vhost_enable_notify()
>> is often called with unlikely(), expecting that avail index has
>> not been updated.
>>
>> Signed-off-by: Stefano Garzarella <sgarzare at redhat.com>
>
>... and can in theory even hurt due to an extra memory write.
>So ... performance test restults pls?
Right, could be.

I'll run some perf test with vsock, about net, do you have a test suite 
or common step to follow to test it?

Thanks,
Stefano