• Jack Morgenstein's avatar
    mlx4_core: Roll back round robin bitmap allocation commit for CQs, SRQs, and MPTs · 7c6d74d2
    Jack Morgenstein authored
    Commit f4ec9e95 "mlx4_core: Change bitmap allocator to work in round-robin fashion"
    introduced round-robin allocation (via bitmap) for all resources which allocate
    via a bitmap.
    
    Round robin allocation is desirable for mcgs, counters, pd's, UARs, and xrcds.
    These are simply numbers, with no involvement of ICM memory mapping.
    
    Round robin is required for QPs, since we had a problem with immediate
    reuse of a 24-bit QP number (commit f4ec9e95).
    
    However, for other resources which use the bitmap allocator and involve
    mapping ICM memory -- MPTs, CQs, SRQs -- round-robin is not desirable.
    
    What happens in these cases is the following:
    
    ICM memory is allocated and mapped in chunks of 256K.
    
    Since the resource allocation index goes up monotonically, the allocator
    will eventually require mapping a new chunk. Now, chunks are also unmapped
    when their reference count goes back to zero.  Thus, if a single app is
    running and starts/exits frequently we will have the following situation:
    
    When the app starts, a new chunk must be allocated and mapped.
    
    When the app exits, the chunk reference count goes back to zero, and the
    chunk is unmapped and freed. Therefore, the app must pay the cost of allocation
    and mapping of ICM memory each time it runs (although the price is paid only when
    allocating the initial entry in the new chunk).
    
    For apps which allocate MPTs/SRQs/CQs and which operate as described above,
    this presented a performance problem.
    
    We therefore roll back the round-robin allocator modification for MPTs, CQs, SRQs.
    Reported-by: default avatarMatthew Finlay <matt@mellanox.com>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarJack Morgenstein <jackm@dev.mellanox.co.il>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarOr Gerlitz <ogerlitz@mellanox.com>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
    7c6d74d2
alloc.c 9.86 KB