[PATCH net-next] hv_netvsc: Add a comment clarifying batching logic

* [PATCH net-next] hv_netvsc: Add a comment clarifying batching logic
@ 2021-03-12 23:45 Haiyang Zhang
  2021-03-13  4:37 ` Dexuan Cui
  2021-03-14 21:40 ` patchwork-bot+netdevbpf
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 3+ messages in thread
From: Haiyang Zhang @ 2021-03-12 23:45 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: linux-hyperv, netdev
  Cc: haiyangz, kys, sthemmin, olaf, vkuznets, davem, linux-kernel,
	Shachar Raindel

From: Shachar Raindel <shacharr@microsoft.com>

The batching logic in netvsc_send is non-trivial, due to
a combination of the Linux API and the underlying hypervisor
interface. Add a comment explaining why the code is written this
way.

Signed-off-by: Shachar Raindel <shacharr@microsoft.com>
Signed-off-by: Haiyang Zhang <haiyangz@microsoft.com>
---
 .../ethernet/microsoft/netvsc.rst             | 14 ++++++++-----
 drivers/net/hyperv/netvsc.c                   | 20 +++++++++++++++++++
 2 files changed, 29 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)

diff --git a/Documentation/networking/device_drivers/ethernet/microsoft/netvsc.rst b/Documentation/networking/device_drivers/ethernet/microsoft/netvsc.rst
index c3f51c672a68..fc5acd427a5d 100644
--- a/Documentation/networking/device_drivers/ethernet/microsoft/netvsc.rst
+++ b/Documentation/networking/device_drivers/ethernet/microsoft/netvsc.rst
@@ -87,11 +87,15 @@ Receive Buffer
   contain one or more packets. The number of receive sections may be changed
   via ethtool Rx ring parameters.
 
-  There is a similar send buffer which is used to aggregate packets for sending.
-  The send area is broken into chunks of 6144 bytes, each of section may
-  contain one or more packets. The send buffer is an optimization, the driver
-  will use slower method to handle very large packets or if the send buffer
-  area is exhausted.
+  There is a similar send buffer which is used to aggregate packets
+  for sending.  The send area is broken into chunks, typically of 6144
+  bytes, each of section may contain one or more packets. Small
+  packets are usually transmitted via copy to the send buffer. However,
+  if the buffer is temporarily exhausted, or the packet to be transmitted is
+  an LSO packet, the driver will provide the host with pointers to the data
+  from the SKB. This attempts to achieve a balance between the overhead of
+  data copy and the impact of remapping VM memory to be accessible by the
+  host.
 
 XDP support
 -----------
diff --git a/drivers/net/hyperv/netvsc.c b/drivers/net/hyperv/netvsc.c
index dc3f73c3b33e..dc333dceb055 100644
--- a/drivers/net/hyperv/netvsc.c
+++ b/drivers/net/hyperv/netvsc.c
@@ -1006,6 +1006,26 @@ static inline void move_pkt_msd(struct hv_netvsc_packet **msd_send,
 }
 
 /* RCU already held by caller */
+/* Batching/bouncing logic is designed to attempt to optimize
+ * performance.
+ *
+ * For small, non-LSO packets we copy the packet to a send buffer
+ * which is pre-registered with the Hyper-V side. This enables the
+ * hypervisor to avoid remapping the aperture to access the packet
+ * descriptor and data.
+ *
+ * If we already started using a buffer and the netdev is transmitting
+ * a burst of packets, keep on copying into the buffer until it is
+ * full or we are done collecting a burst. If there is an existing
+ * buffer with space for the RNDIS descriptor but not the packet, copy
+ * the RNDIS descriptor to the buffer, keeping the packet in place.
+ *
+ * If we do batching and send more than one packet using a single
+ * NetVSC message, free the SKBs of the packets copied, except for the
+ * last packet. This is done to streamline the handling of the case
+ * where the last packet only had the RNDIS descriptor copied to the
+ * send buffer, with the data pointers included in the NetVSC message.
+ */
 int netvsc_send(struct net_device *ndev,
 		struct hv_netvsc_packet *packet,
 		struct rndis_message *rndis_msg,
-- 
2.25.1


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