Re: [PATCH net-next] net: add a fast path in __netif_schedule()

On Fri, Oct 17, 2025 at 7:53 AM Eric Dumazet [off-list ref] wrote:

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 <edumazet@google.com>

Reviewed-by: Kuniyuki Iwashima <kuniyu@google.com>

Thanks!