rps_dev_flow_table is specific to each device queue. Each entry contains a CPU and a tail queue counter. The CPU is the "current" CPU for a matching flow. The tail queue counter holds the value of a tail queue counter for the associated CPU's backlog queue at the time of last enqueue for a flow matching the entry. Each backlog queue has a queue head counter which is incremented on dequeue, and so a queue tail counter is computed as queue head count + queue length. When a packet is enqueued on a backlog queue, the current value of the queue tail counter is saved in the hash entry of the rps_dev_flow_table. And now the trick: when selecting the CPU for RPS (get_rps_cpu) the rps_sock_flow table and the rps_dev_flow table for the RX queue are consulted. When the desired CPU for the flow (found in the rps_sock_flow table) does not match the current CPU (found in the rps_dev_flow table), the current CPU is changed to the desired CPU if one of the following is true: - The current CPU is unset (equal to RPS_NO_CPU) - Current CPU is offline - The current CPU's queue head counter >= queue tail counter in the rps_dev_flow table. This checks if the queue tail has advanced beyond the last packet that was enqueued using this table entry. This guarantees that all packets queued using this entry have been dequeued, thus preserving in order delivery. Making each queue have its own rps_dev_flow table has two advantages: 1) the tail queue counters will be written on each receive, so keeping the table local to interrupting CPU s good for locality. 2) this allows lockless access to the table-- the CPU number and queue tail counter need to be accessed together under mutual exclusion from netif_receive_skb, we assume that this is only called from device napi_poll which is non-reentrant. This patch implements RFS for TCP and connected UDP sockets. It should be usable for other flow oriented protocols. There are two configuration parameters for RFS. The "rps_flow_entries" kernel init parameter sets the number of entries in the rps_sock_flow_table, the per rxqueue sysfs entry "rps_flow_cnt" contains the number of entries in the rps_dev_flow table for the rxqueue. Both are rounded to power of two. The obvious benefit of RFS (over just RPS) is that it achieves CPU locality between the receive processing for a flow and the applications processing; this can result in increased performance (higher pps, lower latency). The benefits of RFS are dependent on cache hierarchy, application load, and other factors. On simple benchmarks, we don't necessarily see improvement and sometimes see degradation. However, for more complex benchmarks and for applications where cache pressure is much higher this technique seems to perform very well. Below are some benchmark results which show the potential benfit of this patch. The netperf test has 500 instances of netperf TCP_RR test with 1 byte req. and resp. The RPC test is an request/response test similar in structure to netperf RR test ith 100 threads on each host, but does more work in userspace that netperf. e1000e on 8 core Intel No RFS or RPS 104K tps at 30% CPU No RFS (best RPS config): 290K tps at 63% CPU RFS 303K tps at 61% CPU RPC test tps CPU% 50/90/99% usec latency Latency StdDev No RFS/RPS 103K 48% 757/900/3185 4472.35 RPS only: 174K 73% 415/993/2468 491.66 RFS 223K 73% 379/651/1382 315.61 Signed-off-by: Tom Herbert Signed-off-by: Eric Dumazet Signed-off-by: David S. Miller