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diff --git a/docs/all/tunning.rst b/docs/all/tunning.rst new file mode 100644 index 000000000..075bf0488 --- /dev/null +++ b/docs/all/tunning.rst @@ -0,0 +1,97 @@ +Low Latency Tunning Suggestion +============================== + +The correct configuration is critical for improving the NFV performance/latency. +Even working on the same codebase, configurations can cause wildly different +performance/latency results. + +There are many combinations of configurations, from hardware configuration to +Operating System configuration and application level configuration. And there +is no one simple configuration that works for every case. To tune a specific +scenario, it's important to know the behaviors of different configurations and +their impact. + +Platform Configuration +---------------------- + +Some hardware features can be configured through firmware interface(like BIOS) +but others may not be configurable (e.g. SMI on most platforms). + +* **Power management:** + Most power management related features save power at the + expensive of latency. These features include: Intel®Turbo Boost Technology, + Enhanced Intel®SpeedStep, Processor C state and P state. Normally they should + be disabled but, depending on the real-time application design and latency + requirements, there might be some features can be enabled if the impact on + deterministic execution of the workload is small. + +* **Hyper-Threading:** + The logic cores that share resource with other logic cores can introduce + latency so the recommendation is to disable this feature for realtime use + cases. + +* **Legacy USB Support/Port 60/64 Emulation:** + These features involve some emulation in firmware and can introduce random + latency. It is recommended that they are disabled. + +* **SMI (System Management Interrupt):** + SMI runs outside of the kernel code and can potentially cause + latency. It is a pity there is no simple way to disable it. Some vendors may + provide related switches in BIOS but most machines do not have this capability. + +Operating System Configuration +------------------------------ + +* **CPU isolation:** + To achieve deterministic latency, dedicated CPUs should be allocated for + realtime application. This can be achieved by isolating cpus from kernel + scheduler. Please refer to + http://lxr.free-electrons.com/source/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt#L1608 + for more information. + +* **Memory allocation:** + Memory shoud be reserved for realtime applications and usually hugepage should + be used to reduce page fauts/TLB misses. + +* **IRQ affinity:** + All the non-realtime IRQs should be affinitized to non realtime CPUs to + reduce the impact on realtime CPUs. Some OS distributions contain an irqbalance + deamon which balances the IRQs among all the cores dynamically. It should be + disabled as well. + +* **Device assignment for VM:** + If a device is used in a VM, then device passthrough is desirable. In this case, + the IOMMU should be enabled. + +* **Tickless:** + Frequent clock ticks cause latency. CONFIG_NOHZ_FULL should be enabled in the + linux kernel. With CONFIG_NOHZ_FULL, the physical CPU will trigger many fewer + clock tick interrupts(currently, 1 tick per second). This can reduce latency + because each host timer interrupt triggers a VM exit from guest to host which + causes performance/latency impacts. + +* **TSC:** + Mark TSC clock source as reliable. A TSC clock source that seems to be + unreliable causes the kernel to continuously enable the clock source watchdog + to check if TSC frequency is still correct. On recent Intel platforms with + Constant TSC/Invariant TSC/Synchronized TSC, the TSC is reliable so the + watchdog is useless but cause latency. + +* **Idle:** + The poll option forces a polling idle loop that can slightly improve the + performance of waking up an idle CPU. + +* **RCU_NOCB:** + RCU is a kernel synchronization mechanism. Refer to + http://lxr.free-electrons.com/source/Documentation/RCU/whatisRCU.txt for more + information. With RCU_NOCB, the impact from RCU to the VNF will be reduced. + +* **Disable the RT throttling:** + RT Throttling is a Linux kernel mechanism that + occurs when a process or thread uses 100% of the core, leaving no resources for + the Linux scheduler to execute the kernel/housekeeping tasks. RT Throttling + increases the latency so should be disabled. + +* **NUMA configuration:** + To achieve the best latency. CPU/Memory and device allocated for realtime + application/VM should be in the same NUMA node. |