• Eric Dumazet's avatar
    net: network drivers no longer need to implement ndo_busy_poll() · ce6aea93
    Eric Dumazet authored
    Instead of having to implement complex ndo_busy_poll() method,
    drivers can simply rely on NAPI poll logic.
    
    Busy polling gains are mainly coming from polling itself,
    not on exact details on how we poll the device.
    
    ndo_busy_poll() if implemented can avoid touching
    napi state, but it adds extra synchronization between
    normal napi->poll() and busy poll handler, slowing down
    the common path (non busy polling) with extra atomic operations.
    In practice few drivers ever got busy poll because of the complexity.
    
    We could go one step further, and make busy polling
    available for all NAPI drivers, but this would require
    that all netif_napi_del() calls are done in process context
    so that we can call synchronize_rcu().
    Full audit would be required.
    
    Before this is done, a driver still needs to call :
    
    - skb_mark_napi_id() for each skb provided to the stack.
    - napi_hash_add() and napi_hash_del() to allocate a napi_id per napi struct.
    - Make sure RCU grace period is respected after napi_hash_del() before
      memory containing napi structure is freed.
    
    Followup patch implements busy poll for mlx5 driver as an example.
    Signed-off-by: default avatarEric Dumazet <edumazet@google.com>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
    ce6aea93
dev.c 195 KB