Re: [RFC] New driver API to speed up small packets xmits

(Mistaken didn't reply-all previous time)

Hi Dave,

David Stevens [off-list ref] wrote on 05/11/2007 02:57:56 AM:

The word "small" is coming up a lot in this discussion, and
I think packet size really has nothing to do with it. Multiple
streams generating packets of any size would benefit; the
key ingredient is a queue length greater than 1.

Correct. Re-thinking about this - for larger packets the bandwidth
may not improve as it reaches line-speed, but I guess CPU util could
reduce (which could reduce in small packet case too). Using "small"
was not covering this case.

Thanks,

- KK

I think the intent is to remove queue lock cycles by taking
the whole list (at least up to the count of free ring buffers)
when the queue is greater than one packet, thus effectively
removing the lock expense for n-1 packets.