Re: RFC: NAPI packet weighting patch

["David S. Miller" <davem@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

From: Jon Mason <jdmason@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2005 16:51:48 -0500

> Why not have the driver set the weight to 16/32 respectively for the
> weight (or better yet, have someone run numbers to find weight that
> are closer to what the adapter can actually use)?  While these
> numbers may not be optimal for every system, this is much better
> that the current system, and would only require 5 or so extra lines
> of code per NAPI enabled driver.

Why do this when we can adjust the weight in one spot,
namely the upper level NAPI ->poll() running loop?

It can measure the overhead, how many packets processed, etc.
and make intelligent decisions based upon that.  This is a CPU
speed, memory speed, I/O bus speed, and link speed agnostic
solution.

The driver need not take any part in this, and the scheme will
dynamically adjust to resource usage changes in the system.