I read a couple of articles (https://www.thomas-krenn.com/en/wiki/Optimize_memory_performance_of_Intel_Xeon_Scalable_systems?xtxsearchselecthit=1 and this https://www.exxactcorp.com/blog/HPC/balance-memory-guidelines-for-intel-xeon-scalable-family-processors) and I understood a little bit more.
If the XEON memory controller is able to spread contiguous memory accesses onto different channels in hardware (as Stepphen correctly stated), then, how DPDK with option -n can benefit an application? I also coded a test application to write a 1GB hugepage and calculate time needed but, equipping an additional two DIMM on two unused channels of my available six channels motherboard (X11DPi-NT) , I didn't observe any improvement. This is strange because adding two channels to the 4 already equipped should make a noticeable difference. For reference this is the small program for allocating and writing memory. https://github.com/adibacco/simple_mp_mem_2 and the results with 4 memory channels: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mDoKYLMhMMKDaOS3RuGEnpPgRNKuZOy4lMIhG-1N7B8/edit?usp=sharing On Fri, May 20, 2022 at 5:48 PM Stephen Hemminger <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Fri, 20 May 2022 10:34:46 +0200 > Antonio Di Bacco <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Let us say I have two memory channels each one with its own 16GB memory > > module, I suppose the first memory channel will be used when addressing > > physical memory in the range 0 to 0x4 0000 0000 and the second when > > addressing physical memory in the range 0x4 0000 0000 to 0x7 ffff ffff. > > Correct? > > Now, I need to have a 2GB buffer with one "writer" and one "reader", the > > writer writes on half of the buffer (call it A) and, in the meantime, the > > reader reads on the other half (B). When the writer finishes writing its > > half buffer (A), signal it to the reader and they swap, the reader starts > > to read from A and writer starts to write to B. > > If I allocate the whole buffer (on two 1GB hugepages) across the two memory > > channels, one half of the buffer is allocated on the end of first channel > > while the other half is allocated on the start of the second memory > > channel, would this increase performances compared to the whole buffer > > allocated within the same memory channel? > > Most systems just interleave memory chips based on number of filled slots. > This is handled by BIOS before kernel even starts. > The DPDK has a number of memory channels parameter and what it does > is try and optimize memory allocation by spreading. > > Looks like you are inventing your own limited version of what memif does.
