1. 10 Mar, 2016 38 commits
  2. 09 Mar, 2016 2 commits
    • David S. Miller's avatar
      Merge branch 'kcm' · 9531ab65
      David S. Miller authored
      Tom Herbert says:
      
      ====================
      kcm: Kernel Connection Multiplexor (KCM)
      
      Kernel Connection Multiplexor (KCM) is a facility that provides a
      message based interface over TCP for generic application protocols.
      The motivation for this is based on the observation that although
      TCP is byte stream transport protocol with no concept of message
      boundaries, a common use case is to implement a framed application
      layer protocol running over TCP. To date, most TCP stacks offer
      byte stream API for applications, which places the burden of message
      delineation, message I/O operation atomicity, and load balancing
      in the application. With KCM an application can efficiently send
      and receive application protocol messages over TCP using a
      datagram interface.
      
      In order to delineate message in a TCP stream for receive in KCM, the
      kernel implements a message parser. For this we chose to employ BPF
      which is applied to the TCP stream. BPF code parses application layer
      messages and returns a message length. Nearly all binary application
      protocols are parsable in this manner, so KCM should be applicable
      across a wide range of applications. Other than message length
      determination in receive, KCM does not require any other application
      specific awareness. KCM does not implement any other application
      protocol semantics-- these are are provided in userspace or could be
      implemented in a kernel module layered above KCM.
      
      KCM implements an NxM multiplexor in the kernel as diagrammed below:
      
      +------------+   +------------+   +------------+   +------------+
      | KCM socket |   | KCM socket |   | KCM socket |   | KCM socket |
      +------------+   +------------+   +------------+   +------------+
            |                 |               |                |
            +-----------+     |               |     +----------+
                        |     |               |     |
                     +----------------------------------+
                     |           Multiplexor            |
                     +----------------------------------+
                       |   |           |           |  |
             +---------+   |           |           |  ------------+
             |             |           |           |              |
      +----------+  +----------+  +----------+  +----------+ +----------+
      |  Psock   |  |  Psock   |  |  Psock   |  |  Psock   | |  Psock   |
      +----------+  +----------+  +----------+  +----------+ +----------+
            |              |           |            |             |
      +----------+  +----------+  +----------+  +----------+ +----------+
      | TCP sock |  | TCP sock |  | TCP sock |  | TCP sock | | TCP sock |
      +----------+  +----------+  +----------+  +----------+ +----------+
      
      The KCM sockets provide the datagram interface to applications,
      Psocks are the state for each attached TCP connection (i.e. where
      message delineation is performed on receive).
      
      A description of the APIs and design can be found in the included
      Documentation/networking/kcm.txt.
      
      In this patch set:
      
        - Add MSG_BATCH flag. This is used in sendmsg msg_hdr flags to
          indicate that more messages will be sent on the socket. The stack
          may batch messages up if it is beneficial for transmission.
        - In sendmmsg, set MSG_BATCH in all sub messages except for the last
          one.
        - In order to allow sendmmsg to contain multiple messages with
          SOCK_SEQPAKET we allow each msg_hdr in the sendmmsg to set MSG_EOR.
        - Add KCM module
          - This supports SOCK_DGRAM and SOCK_SEQPACKET.
        - KCM documentation
      
      v2:
        - Added splice and page operations.
        - Assemble receive messages in place on TCP socket (don't have a
          separate assembly queue.
        - Based on above, enforce maxmimum receive message to be the size
          of the recceive socket buffer.
        - Support message assembly timeout. Use the timeout value in
          sk_rcvtimeo on the TCP socket.
        - Tested some with a couple of other production applications,
          see ~5% improvement in application latency.
      
      Testing:
      
      Dave Watson has integrated KCM into Thrift and we intend to put these
      changes into open source. Example of this is in:
      
      https://github.com/djwatson/fbthrift/commit/
      dd7e0f9cf4e80912fdb90f6cd394db24e61a14cc
      
      Some initial KCM Thrift benchmark numbers (comment from Dave)
      
      Thrift by default ties a single connection to a single thread.  KCM is
      instead able to load balance multiple connections across multiple epoll
      loops easily.
      
      A test sending ~5k bytes of data to a kcm thrift server, dropping the
      bytes on recv:
      
      QPS     Latency / std dev Latency
        without KCM
          70336     209/123
        with KCM
          70353     191/124
      
      A test sending a small request, then doing work in the epoll thread,
      before serving more requests:
      
      QPS     Latency / std dev Latency
      without KCM
          14282     559/602
      with KCM
          23192     344/234
      
      At the high end, there's definitely some additional kernel overhead:
      
      Cranking the pipelining way up, with lots of small requests
      
      QPS     Latency / std dev Latency
      without KCM
         1863429     127/119
      with KCM
         1337713     192/241
      
      ---
      
      So for a "realistic" workload, KCM performs pretty well (second case).
      Under extreme conditions of highest tps we still have some work to do.
      In its nature a multiplexor will spread work between CPUs which is
      logically good for load balancing but coan conflict with the goal
      promoting affinity. Batching messages on both send and receive are
      the means to recoup performance.
      
      Future support:
      
       - Integration with TLS (TLS-in-kernel is a separate initiative).
       - Page operations/splice support
       - Unconnected KCM sockets. Will be able to attach sockets to different
         destinations, AF_KCM addresses with be used in sendmsg and recvmsg
         to indicate destination
       - Explore more utility in performing BPF inline with a TCP data stream
         (setting SO_MARK, rxhash for messages being sent received on
         KCM sockets).
       - Performance work
         - Diagnose performance issues under high message load
      
      FAQ (Questions posted on LWN)
      
      Q: Why do this in the kernel?
      
      A: Because the kernel is good at scheduling threads and steering packets
         to threads. KCM fits well into this model since it allows the unit
         of work for scheduling and steering to be the application layer
         messages themselves. KCM should be thought of as generic application
         protocol acceleration. It to the philosophy that the kernel provides
         generic and extensible interfaces.
      
      Q: How can adding code in the path yield better performance?
      
      A: It is true that for just sending receiving a single message there
         would be some performance loss since the code path is longer (for
         instance comparing netperf to KCM). But for real production
         applications performance takes on many dynamics. Parallelism, context
         switching, affinity, granularity of locking, and load balancing are
         all relevant. The theory of KCM is that by an application-centric
         interface, the kernel can provide better support for these
         performance characteristics.
      
      Q: Why not use an existing message-oriented protocol such as RUDP,
         DCCP, SCTP, RDS, and others?
      
      A: Because that would entail using a completely new transport protocol.
         Deploying a new protocol at scale is either a huge undertaking or
         fundamentally infeasible. This is true in either the Internet and in
         the data center due in a large part to protocol ossification.
         Besides, KCM we want KCM to work existing, well deployed application
         protocols that we couldn't change even if we wanted to (e.g. http/2).
      
         KCM simply defines a new interface method, it does not redefine any
         aspect of the transport protocol nor application protocol, nor set
         any new requirements on these. Neither does KCM attempt to implement
         any application protocol logic other than message deliniation in the
         stream. These are fundamental requirement of KCM.
      
      Q: How does this affect TCP?
      
      A: It doesn't, not in the slightest. The use of KCM can be one-sided,
         KCM has no effect on the wire.
      
      Q: Why force TCP into doing something it's not designed for?
      
      A: TCP is defined as transport protocol and there is no standard that
         says the API into TCP must be stream based sockets, or for that
         matter sockets at all (or even that TCP needs to be implemented in a
         kernel). KCM is not inconsistent with the design of TCP just because
         to makes an message based interface over TCP, if it were then every
         application protocol sending messages over TCP would also be! :-)
      
      Q: What about the problem of a connections with very slow rate of
         incoming data? As a result your application can get storms of very
         short reads. And it actually happens a lot with connection from
         mobile devices and it is a problem for servers handling a lot of
         connections.
      
      A: The storm of short reads will occur regardless of whether KCM is used
         or not. KCM does have one advantage in this scenario though, it will
         only wake up the application when a full message has been received,
         not for each packet that makes up part of a bigger messages. If a
         bunch of small messages are received, the application can receive
         messages in batches using recvmmsg.
      
      Q: Why not just use DPDK, or at least provide KCM like functionality in
         DPDK?
      
      A: DPDK, or more generally OS bypass presumably with a TCP stack in
         userland, presents a different model of load balancing than that of
         KCM (and the kernel). KCM implements load balancing of messages
         across the threads of an application, whereas DPDK load balances
         based on queues which are more static and coarse-grained since
         multiple connections are bound to queues. DPDK works best when
         processing of packets is silo'ed in a thread on the CPU processing
         a queue, and packet processing (for both the stack and application)
         is fairly uniform. KCM works well for applications where the amount
         of work to process messages varies an application work is commonly
         delegated to worker threads often on different CPUs.
      
         The message based interface over TCP is something that could be
         provide by a DPDK or OS bypass library.
      
      Q: I'm not quite seeing this for HTTP. Maybe for HTTP/2, I guess, or web
         sockets?
      
      A: Yes. KCM is most appropriate for message based protocols over TCP
         where is easy to deduce the message length (e.g. a length field)
         and the protocol implements its own message ordering semantics.
         Fortunately this encompasses many modern protocols.
      
      Q: How is memory limited and controlled?
      
      A: In v2 all data for messages is now kept in socket buffers, either
         those for TCP or KCM, so socket buffer limits are applicable.
         This includes receive messages assembly which is now done ont teh
         TCP socket buffer instead of a separate queue-- this has the
         consequence that the TCP socket buffer limit provides an
         enforceable maxmimum message size.
      
         Additionally, a timeout may be set for messages assembly. The
         value used for this is taken from sk_rcvtimeo of the TCP socket.
      ====================
      Signed-off-by: default avatarDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
      9531ab65
    • Tom Herbert's avatar
      kcm: Add description in Documentation · 10016594
      Tom Herbert authored
      Add kcm.txt to desribe KCM and interfaces.
      Signed-off-by: default avatarTom Herbert <tom@herbertland.com>
      Signed-off-by: default avatarDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
      10016594