Fast memory allocation for networking

Posted Mar 24, 2017 9:19 UTC (Fri) by liam (subscriber, #84133)
Parent article: Fast memory allocation for networking

They also use techniques like polling, which wastes CPU time; he thinks that the kernel can do better than that.

I thought polling (threaded or otherwise) was the only option the kernel has (I'm assuming signals are off the table)?

Fast memory allocation for networking

Posted Mar 24, 2017 9:32 UTC (Fri) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (1 responses)

Kernel can use device interrupts. That actually was the only option before the NAPI work.

Fast memory allocation for networking

Posted Mar 25, 2017 9:39 UTC (Sat) by liam (subscriber, #84133) [Link]

Heh, well, yeah, but, as you say, napi was adopted to fix the problems associated with high frequency interrupts. I assumed that, given the even faster interfaces now being targeted, the event driven approaches that the kernel supports would have similar issues (despite the March of Moore).