Re: [dpdk-dev] Random numbers at line-rate

[Stephen Hemminger <stephen@networkplumber.org>]

On Mon, 21 Jul 2014 15:54:15 -0400
Neil Horman <nhorman@tuxdriver.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Jul 21, 2014 at 09:24:36PM +0200, Chris Pappas wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > I need to generate a random number per packet and I used the rte_fast_rand
> > function to do so. When I run the code for one port-core I get almost
> > line-rate performance. However, running simultaneously on multiple cores
> > degrades performance significantly. (in all cases I uses minimum-sized
> > packets).
> > 
> > Shouldn't the implementation scale for multicore and not degrade
> > performance or am I missing anything? Also, is there another recommendation
> > for generating randomness at line-rate? (the cpu does not support rdrand).
> > 
> > Best regards,
> > Chris
> > 
> 
> thats an odd random number generator.  I think, without locking, its likely on a
> multicore system to produce identical values on multiple cores operating in
> parallel (since multiple cores can read rte_red_rand_seed at the same time).
> That may well lead to multiple packets having the same nonce, which might cause
> odd behavior.
> 
> If your cpu supports it, I'd suggest writing some inline assembly to use the
> rdrand instruction instead.  I'm not sure about its performance relative to the
> current implementation, but IIRC the instruction is handled internal to the
> core, so it should scale with any number of cpus.
> 
> neil
> 

Or  just do per-core seed value (and use RTE_PER_LCORE)