And NAPI scheme behaves different since we can not assume that all network
traffic is well-behaved like TCP. System has to be manageable and to "perform"
under any network load not only for well-behaved TCP. So of course we will
see some differences -- there are no free lunch. Simply we can not blindly
look at one test. IMO NAPI is the best overall performer. The number speaks
for themselves.
I don't doubt it's a win for most cases, we just want to reap the benefit
for the large SMP systems as well ... the fundamental mechanism seems
very scalable to me, we probably just need to do a little tuning?
NAPI kernel path is included in 2.4.20-pre4 the comparison below is mainly
between e1000 driver w and w/o NAPI and the NAPI port to e1000 is still
evolving.
We are running from 2.5.latest ... any updates needed for NAPI for the
driver in the current 2.5 tree, or is that OK?
Thanks,
Martin.