RE: [PATCH 0/1] Add security perf application

[Akhil Goyal <gakhil@marvell.com>]

Hi Anoob,
> Hi Akhil,
> 
> Do you have any further comments?
> > > > Subject: [PATCH 0/1] Add security perf application
> > > >
> > > > Add performance application to test security session create &
> > > > destroy rates supported by the security enabled cryptodev PMD. The
> > > > application would create specified number of sessions and captures
> > > > the time taken for the same before proceeding to destroy of the
> > > > same. When operating on multi-core, the number of sessions would be
> > > > evenly distributed across all cores.
> > > >
> > > > The application would test with all combinations of cipher & auth
> > > > algorithms supported by the PMD.
> > > >
> > > > The app is similar to 'test-flow-perf' tool which captures the rate
> > > > at which flow rules can be created and destroyed.
> > > >
> > > Is it not good to add this into dpdk-test-crypto-perf?
> >
> > [Anoob] IMO, It is not good. Following are the reasons,
> >
> > Dpdk-test-crypto-perf is primarily for capturing crypto operation throughputs.
> > And so the framework allocates minimal number of sessions and the datapath
> > function pointer etc deals with only one session. The entire framework
> available
> > in that application is for populating crypto_op and mbuf, which is not required
> > for this app. Touching that framework would mean throughput tests would get
> > affected, which I don't think is the right thing to do. And for PMDs like Intel's
> > (which don't have security support), it would be an unnecessary performance
> > drop.
> >
> > The proposed app currently runs for all supported ciphers while in dpdk-test-
> > crypto-perf, it runs only for a specific algorithm combination. If we want to
> limit
> > the functionality of the proposed app to match dpdk-test-crypto-perf usage,
> > that also calls for a major rework.
> >
> > And the only thing that can be reused is probably cryptodev init & queue pair
> > configuration. As you are well aware, security device can be cryptodev or an
> > ethdev. Dpdk-test-crypto-perf doesn't have support for initializing ethdev and
> > rightfully so. Adding this to an already complicated framework will be counter
> > productive in the long run.
> >
> > > Can we add as a separate .c file, say, cperf_test_sec_session.c in
> > > test-crypto- perf folder and use the existing framework.
> >
> > [Anoob] As I mentioned earlier, nothing from the framework can be leveraged
> > for this application. If you insist on not having a new app, then all this can be
> > integrated into dpdk-test-crypto-perf, but that will follow it's own path from
> > very early stage (mempool allocations etc need to happen differently). And it
> > would mean adding more command line options (which is currently at 37) as
> we
> > add more options for measuring security perf.
> >
Are you planning to add more options is that app?
if not, then adding just one more option about nb_sess would do trick in test-crypto-perf.
You would just need to add 2 new functions (test_security_session_perf and sec_conf_init)
in a new .c file in app/test-crypto-perf/ and the mempool_init is being called from
cperf_initialize_cryptodev() which we can hook to get the nb_sessions from the command line arguments.
I do not suspect any changes in datapath - so it won't be an issue.
The point is not about the things being common in the two apps. The point is whether we can
accommodate in existing app or not. We cannot have too many different apps.
We only introduce apps which are not possible to accommodate in existing ones.
I remember, there was discussion in past about having a new app for testing multi-process for crypto.
But that was dropped as we do not want too many apps.
I agree that common part would be init only but it can scale for non-security sessions easily.

Regards,
Akhil