2002-02-19 10:34:47

by Samium Gromoff

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Ess Solo-1 interrupt behaviour (fwd)

Forwarded message:
> From root Tue Feb 19 15:52:24 2002
> Subject: Ess Solo-1 interrupt behaviour
> To: [email protected]
> Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2002 15:52:24 +0300 (MSK)
> X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL6]
> Content-Length: 1318
>
> I`ve recently spotted that a solo1 pci soundcard generates
> 16000+ interrupts/second with esd started idling.
>
> What strikes me as odd is that my old good isa sb16 vibra
> does only 600+ interrupts.
>
> Also i`ve had some strange experience of this interrupt load
> affecting the disk io.
> The situation was the next: i`ve had a large transfer to a samba
> boxen with this poor solo1 soundcard. I would like to emphasize that i
> turn off the drive write-caching ability in order to gain reliability,
> and that with write cacheing the following issues are hardly noticeable.
> So yes, i was copying large amount of data thru the 10mbit rtl8029s
> to the samba box. What i`ve tested are two situations: with esd on ==
> effective 16,5k interrupts/second, and with esd off, and thus no interrupts
> generated by the solo1 card.
> What i`ve noticed quite disappointed me: with esd turned on, the disk
> writeout activity (well, the seek activity) was _much_ higher.
> Ie i`ve stopped esd, the seekage dropped down, i`ve started esd -
> seekage goes back.
>
> So we basically have here two strange issues:
> 1. Ess Solo-1 driver generates awful lots of interrupts (16k/s)
> 2. Heavy interrupt load forces the elevator to make bad
> decisions
>
> Info: linux-2.4.17-rmap12e, p2-300 128M RAM, rtl8029 NIC, Ess Solo-1 SB
>
> regards, Samium Gromoff
>
>
resending, Samium Gromoff