Re: [dpdk-users] How to use software prefetching for custom structures to increase throughput on the fast path

[Stephen Hemminger <stephen@networkplumber.org>]

On Tue, 11 Sep 2018 12:18:42 -0500
Arvind Narayanan <webguru2688@gmail.com> wrote:

> If I don't do any processing, I easily get 10G. It is only when I access
> the tag when the throughput drops.
> What confuses me is if I use the following snippet, it works at line rate.
> 
> ```
> int temp_key = 1; // declared outside of the for loop
> 
> for (i = 0; i < pkt_count; i++) {
>     if (rte_hash_lookup_data(rx_table, &(temp_key), (void **)&val[i]) < 0) {
>     }
> }
> ```
> 
> But as soon as I replace `temp_key` with `my_packet->tag1`, I experience
> fall in throughput (which in a way confirms the issue is due to cache
> misses).

Your packet data is not in cache.
Doing prefetch can help but it is very timing sensitive. If prefetch is done
before data is available it won't help. And if prefetch is done just before
data is used then there isn't enough cycles to get it from memory to the cache.