As of commit d28bb51 ("[tcp] Defer sending ACKs until all received
packets have been processed"), increasing the RX ring size will
increase the number of received packets per transmitted ACK (since
each poll will process up to one complete receive ring). Under KVM,
this can make a substantial (up to ~200%) difference to the overall
download speed, since transmissions are very expensive.
Increase the ring fill level from four to eight packets: this
increases the download speed by around 50% at a cost of around 8kB of
heap space. Further speedups are possible by increasing the ring size
further, but it would be preferable to find alternative methods which
do not use noticeable amounts of heap space.
Tested-by: Robin Smidsrød <robin@smidsrod.no>
Signed-off-by: Michael Brown <mcb30@ipxe.org>
It is unclear from the datasheets whether or not the TX ring can be
completely filled (i.e. whether writing the tail value as equal to the
current head value will cause the ring to be treated as completely
full or completely empty). It is very plausible that this edge case
could differ in behaviour between real hardware and the many
implementations of an emulated Intel NIC found in various virtual
machines. Err on the side of caution and always leave at least one
ring entry empty.
Signed-off-by: Michael Brown <mcb30@ipxe.org>
The Intel 10 Gigabit NICs have a datapath that is almost
register-compatible with the Intel 1 Gigabit NICs. Expose common
functionality to avoid duplication of code in the new "intelx" driver.
Signed-off-by: Michael Brown <mcb30@ipxe.org>
The Intel 10 Gigabit NICs use the same simplified (aka "legacy")
descriptor format and the same layout for descriptor register blocks
as the Intel 1 Gigabit NICs. The offsets of the descriptor register
blocks are not the same.
Simplify reuse of the existing code by removing all hardcoded offsets
for registers within descriptor register blocks, and ensuring that all
offsets are calculated using the descriptor register block base
address provided via intel_init_ring().
Signed-off-by: Michael Brown <mcb30@ipxe.org>
On i350 the datasheet contradicts itself in stating that the default
value of RXDCTL.ENABLE for queue zero is both set (according to the
"Receive Initialization" section) and unset (according to the "Receive
Descriptor Control - RXDCTL" section). Empirical evidence suggests
that the default value is unset.
Explicitly enable both transmit and receive queues to avoid any
ambiguity.
Signed-off-by: Michael Brown <mcb30@ipxe.org>