On Wed, 22 February 2006 12:37:48 -0800, Caitlin Bestler wrote: > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > Below patch wasn't even compile tested. I'm not involved > > with network drivers anymore, so my personal interest is > > fairly low. But since I firmly believe in the advantages and > > feasibility of interrupt-less TX, there should at least be an > > ugly broken patch to flame about. Go for it, tell me how stupid I am! > > > > Jörn > > I am assuming the real goal is avoiding interrupts when > transmit completions can be reported without them on a > reasonably periodic basis.
Not necessarily on a periodic basis. For some network driver I once worked on, the hardware simply had a ring buffer of n frames. Whenever a n+1th frame was transmitted, the first would be checked for completion. If it was completed, it was freed, else the new frame was dropped (and freed). So for this driver, the hardware permanently owned n memory areas which would never get freed. Nice performance at the cost of a little wasted memory. Alternatively you could set a timer as well, sure. > Wouldn't that goal be achievable by the type of transmit > buffer ring implied for net channels? Possibly. I don't really understand the transmit side of net channels yet. But the principle should be the same. Whatever data structures the kernel need on top of the raw packet is freed early, the raw packet is handed over to the hardware and freed late. Jörn -- There's nothing better for promoting creativity in a medium than making an audience feel "Hmm I could do better than that!" -- Douglas Adams in a slashdot interview - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe netdev" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
