On 01/12/16 23:46, Tom Herbert wrote: > The only time we > _really_ to allocate an skbuf is when we need to put the packet onto a > queue. All the other use cases are really just to pass a structure > containing a packet from function to function. For that purpose we > should be able to just pass a much smaller structure in a stack > argument and only allocate an skbuff when we need to enqueue. In cases > where we don't ever queue a packet we might never need to allocate any > skbuff Now this intrigues me, because one of the objections to bundling (vs GRO) was the memory usage of all those SKBs. IIRC we already do a 'GRO-like' coalescing when packets reach a TCP socket anyway (or at least in some cases, not sure if all the different ways we can enqueue a TCP packet for RX do it), but if we could carry the packets from NIC to socket without SKBs, doing so in lists rather than one-at-a-time wouldn't cost any extra memory (the packet-pages are all already allocated on the NIC RX ring). Possibly combine the two, so that rather than having potentially four versions of each function (skb, skbundle, void*, void* bundle) you just have the two 'ends'.
-Ed
