tree 1a58003158f03397212979727c2f5cfa37ebc4f2
parent 9ac98284428961bd5be285a6cc1f5e6f5b6644aa
author Jesse Brandeburg <jesse.brandeburg@intel.com> 1162399693 -0800
committer Jeff Garzik <jeff@garzik.org> 1165036320 -0500

e1000: add dynamic itr modes

Add a new dynamic itr algorithm, with 2 modes, and make it the default
operation mode. This greatly reduces latency and increases small packet
performance, at the "cost" of some CPU utilization. Bulk traffic
throughput is unaffected.

The driver can limit the amount of interrupts per second that the
adapter will generate for incoming packets. It does this by writing a
value to the adapter that is based on the maximum amount of interrupts
that the adapter will generate per second.

Setting InterruptThrottleRate to a value greater or equal to 100 will
program the adapter to send out a maximum of that many interrupts per
second, even if more packets have come in. This reduces interrupt
load on the system and can lower CPU utilization under heavy load,
but will increase latency as packets are not processed as quickly.

The default behaviour of the driver previously assumed a static
InterruptThrottleRate value of 8000, providing a good fallback value
for all traffic types,but lacking in small packet performance and
latency. The hardware can handle many more small packets per second
however, and for this reason an adaptive interrupt moderation algorithm
was implemented.

Since 7.3.x, the driver has two adaptive modes (setting 1 or 3) in
which it dynamically adjusts the InterruptThrottleRate value based on
the traffic that it receives. After determining the type of incoming
traffic in the last timeframe, it will adjust the InterruptThrottleRate
to an appropriate value for that traffic.

The algorithm classifies the incoming traffic every interval into
classes.  Once the class is determined, the InterruptThrottleRate
value is adjusted to suit that traffic type the best. There are
three classes defined: "Bulk traffic", for large amounts of packets
of normal size; "Low latency", for small amounts of traffic and/or
a significant percentage of small packets; and "Lowest latency",
for almost completely small packets or minimal traffic.

In dynamic conservative mode, the InterruptThrottleRate value is
set to 4000 for traffic that falls in class "Bulk traffic". If
traffic falls in the "Low latency" or "Lowest latency" class, the
InterruptThrottleRate is increased stepwise to 20000. This default
mode is suitable for most applications.

For situations where low latency is vital such as cluster or
grid computing, the algorithm can reduce latency even more when
InterruptThrottleRate is set to mode 1. In this mode, which operates
the same as mode 3, the InterruptThrottleRate will be increased
stepwise to 70000 for traffic in class "Lowest latency".

Setting InterruptThrottleRate to 0 turns off any interrupt moderation
and may improve small packet latency, but is generally not suitable
for bulk throughput traffic.

Signed-off-by: Jesse Brandeburg <jesse.brandeburg@intel.com>
Cc: Rick Jones <rick.jones2@hp.com>
Signed-off-by: Auke Kok <auke-jan.h.kok@intel.com>