Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S934467AbeAHQKG (ORCPT + 1 other); Mon, 8 Jan 2018 11:10:06 -0500 Received: from iolanthe.rowland.org ([192.131.102.54]:37142 "HELO iolanthe.rowland.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id S932154AbeAHQKE (ORCPT ); Mon, 8 Jan 2018 11:10:04 -0500 Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2018 11:10:03 -0500 (EST) From: Alan Stern X-X-Sender: stern@iolanthe.rowland.org To: Mauro Carvalho Chehab cc: Josef Griebichler , Greg Kroah-Hartman , , Eric Dumazet , Rik van Riel , Paolo Abeni , Hannes Frederic Sowa , Jesper Dangaard Brouer , linux-kernel , netdev , Jonathan Corbet , LMML , Peter Zijlstra , David Miller , Subject: Re: dvb usb issues since kernel 4.9 In-Reply-To: <20180108074324.3c153189@vento.lan> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Return-Path: On Mon, 8 Jan 2018, Mauro Carvalho Chehab wrote: > Em Sun, 7 Jan 2018 10:41:37 -0500 (EST) > Alan Stern escreveu: > > > On Sun, 7 Jan 2018, Mauro Carvalho Chehab wrote: > > > > > > > It seems that the original patch were designed to solve some IRQ issues > > > > > with network cards with causes data losses on high traffic. However, > > > > > it is also causing bad effects on sustained high bandwidth demands > > > > > required by DVB cards, at least on some USB host drivers. > > > > > > > > > > Alan/Greg/Eric/David: > > > > > > > > > > Any ideas about how to fix it without causing regressions to > > > > > network? > > > > > > > > It would be good to know what hardware was involved on the x86 system > > > > and to have some timing data. Can we see the output from lsusb and > > > > usbmon, running on a vanilla kernel that gets plenty of video glitches? > > > > > > From Josef's report, and from the BZ, the affected hardware seems > > > to be based on Montage Technology M88DS3103/M88TS2022 chipset. > > > > What type of USB host controller does the x86_64 system use? EHCI or > > xHCI? > > I'll let Josef answer this. > > > > > > The driver it uses is at drivers/media/usb/dvb-usb-v2/dvbsky.c, > > > with shares a USB implementation that is used by a lot more drivers. > > > The URB handling code is at: > > > > > > drivers/media/usb/dvb-usb-v2/usb_urb.c > > > > > > This particular driver allocates 8 buffers with 4096 bytes each > > > for bulk transfers, using transfer_flags = URB_NO_TRANSFER_DMA_MAP. > > > > > > This become a popular USB hardware nowadays. I have one S960c > > > myself, so I can send you the lsusb from it. You should notice, however, > > > that a DVB-C/DVB-S2 channel can easily provide very high sustained bit > > > rates. Here, on my DVB-S2 provider, a typical transponder produces 58 Mpps > > > of payload after removing URB headers. > > > > You mentioned earlier that the driver uses bulk transfers. In USB-2.0, > > the maximum possible payload data transfer rate using bulk transfers is > > 53248 bytes/ms, which is 53.248 MB/s (i.e., lower than 58 MB/s). And > > even this is possible only if almost nothing else is using the bus at > > the same time. > > No, I said 58 Mbits/s (not bytes). Well, what you actually _wrote_ was "58 Mpps of payload" (see above), and I couldn't tell how to interpret that. :-) 58 Mb/s is obviously almost 8 times less than the full USB bus bandwidth. > On DVB-C and DVB-S2 specs, AFAIKT, there's no hard limit for the maximum > payload data rate, although industry seems to limit it to be around > 60 Mbits/s. On those standards, the maximal bit rate is defined by the > modulation type and by the channel symbol rate. > > To give you a practical example, my DVB-S2 provider modulates each > transponder with 8/PSK (3 bits/symbol), and define channels with a > symbol rate of 30 Mbauds/s. So, it could, theoretically, transport > a MPEG-TS stream up to 90 Mbits/s (minus headers and guard intervals). > In practice, the streams there are transmitted with 58,026.5 Kbits/s. Okay. This is 58 Kb/ms or 7.25 KB/ms. So your scheme of eight 4-KB buffers gives a latency of 0.57 ms with a total capacity of 4.5 ms, which is a lot better than what I was thinking. > > In any case, you might be able to attack the problem simply by using > > more than 8 buffers. With just eight 4096-byte buffers, the total > > pipeline capacity is only about 0.62 ms (at the maximum possible > > transfer rate). Increasing the number of buffers to 65 would give a > > capacity of 5 ms, which is probably a lot better suited for situations > > where completions are handled by the ksoftirqd thread. > > Increasing it to 65 shouldn't be hard. Not sure, however, if the hardware > will actually fill the 65 buffers, but it is worth to try. Given the new information, 65 would be overkill. But going from 8 to 16 might help. > > > Perhaps media drivers could pass some quirk similar to URB_ISO_ASAP, > > > in order to revert the kernel logic to prioritize latency instead of > > > throughput. > > > > It can't be done without pervasive changes to the USB subsystem, which > > I would greatly prefer to avoid. Besides, this wouldn't really solve > > the problem. Decreasing the latency for one device will cause it to be > > increased for others. > > If there is a TV streaming traffic at a USB bus, it means that the > user wants to either watch and/or record a TV program. On such > usecase scenario, a low latency is highly desired for the TV capture > (and display, if the GPU is USB), even it means a higher latency for > other traffic. Not if the other traffic is also a TV capture. :-) It might make sense to classify softirq sources as "high priority" or "low priority", and only defer the "low priority" work to ksoftirqd. Alan Stern