Re: [PATCH v2 1/5] virtio: add functions for piecewise addition of buffers

Il 18/12/2012 14:59, Michael S. Tsirkin ha scritto:

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Can't we track state internally to the virtqueue? Exposing it
seems to buy us nothing since you can't call add_buf between
start and end anyway.

I wanted to keep the state for these functions separate from the
rest. I don't think it makes much sense to move it to struct
virtqueue unless virtqueue_add_buf is converted to use the new API
(doesn't make much sense, could even be a tad slower).

Why would it be slower?

virtqueue_add_buf could be slower if it used the new API.  That's
because of the overhead of writing and reading from struct
virtqueue_buf, instead of using variables in registers.

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On the other hand moving it there would eliminate the dependency
on virtio_ring.h.  Rusty, what do you think?

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And idea: in practice virtio scsi seems to always call
sg_init_one, no? So how about we pass in void* or something and
avoid using sg and count? This would make it useful for -net
BTW.

It also passes the scatterlist from the LLD.  It calls sg_init_one
for the request/response headers.

Try adding a _single variant. You might see unrolling a loop gives
more of a benefit than this whole optimization.

Makes sense, I'll try.  However, note that I *do* need the
infrastructure in this patch because virtio-scsi could never use a
hypothetical virtqueue_add_buf_single; requests always have at least 2
buffers for the headers.

However I could add virtqueue_add_sg_single and use it for those
headers.  The I/O buffer can keep using virtqueue_add_sg.

Paolo