Re: CPU Utiliaztion on a ethernet bridge
On Thu, 2003-11-20 at 22:34, Donovan Baarda wrote:
> Do you really mean poll-based, or DMA based? Traditionally polling is
> evil CPU wise... but there could be reasons why polling is better if
> that is the only thing you are doing. Possibly PC DMA is probably so old
> and crappy that it's not worth using?
It is my understanding that the modern e1000 driver polls the NIC to
find out when new frames are available. You may be correct that it just
looks in the DMA rx ring, though; I am a bit out of my league at this
point. In either case, the PRO/100 and PRO/1000 cards, using the Intel
e100/e1000 drivers, are superb. I suspect the 3c59x driver is not quite
so modern, and the kernel is preempted by NIC interrupts frequently when
new frames come in under your existing bridge configuration.
--
Jeff S Wheeler <jsw@five-elements.com>
Five Elements, Inc.
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