Re: [UPDATE] Fresh zerocopy patch on kernel.org

[Malcolm Beattie]

David S. Miller writes:
> 
> Malcolm Beattie writes:
>  > David S. Miller writes:
>  > > 
>  > > At the usual place:
>  > > 
>  > > ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/davem/zerocopy-2.4.1-1.diff.gz
>  > 
>  > Hmm, disappointing results here; maybe I've missed something.
> 
> As discussed elsewhere there is a %10 to %15 performance hit for
> normal write()'s done with the new code.
> 
> If you do your testing using sendfile() as the data source, you'll
> results ought to be wildly different and more encouraging.

I did say that the ftp test used sendfile() as the data source and
it dropped from 86 MB/s to 62 MB/s. Alexey has mailed me suggesting
the problem may be that netfilter is turned on. It is indeed turned
on in both the 2.4.1 config and the 2.4.1+zc config but maybe it has
a far higher detrimental effect in the zerocopy case. I'm currently
building new non-netfilter kernels and I'll go through the exercise
again. I'm confident I'll end up being impressed with the numbers
even if it takes some tweaking to get there :-)

--Malcolm

-- 
Malcolm Beattie <[e-mail]>
Unix Systems Programmer
Oxford University Computing Services