net: allow skb->head to be a page fragment

skb->head is currently allocated from kmalloc(). This is convenient but
has the drawback the data cannot be converted to a page fragment if
needed.

We have three spots were it hurts :

1) GRO aggregation

 When a linear skb must be appended to another skb, GRO uses the
frag_list fallback, very inefficient since we keep all struct sk_buff
around. So drivers enabling GRO but delivering linear skbs to network
stack aren't enabling full GRO power.

2) splice(socket -> pipe).

 We must copy the linear part to a page fragment.
 This kind of defeats splice() purpose (zero copy claim)

3) TCP coalescing.

 Recently introduced, this permits to group several contiguous segments
into a single skb. This shortens queue lengths and save kernel memory,
and greatly reduce probabilities of TCP collapses. This coalescing
doesnt work on linear skbs (or we would need to copy data, this would be
too slow)

Given all these issues, the following patch introduces the possibility
of having skb->head be a fragment in itself. We use a new skb flag,
skb->head_frag to carry this information.

build_skb() is changed to accept a frag_size argument. Drivers willing
to provide a page fragment instead of kmalloc() data will set a non zero
value, set to the fragment size.

Then, on situations we need to convert the skb head to a frag in itself,
we can check if skb->head_frag is set and avoid the copies or various
fallbacks we have.

This means drivers currently using frags could be updated to avoid the
current skb->head allocation and reduce their memory footprint (aka skb
truesize). (thats 512 or 1024 bytes saved per skb). This also makes
bpf/netfilter faster since the 'first frag' will be part of skb linear
part, no need to copy data.

Signed-off-by: Eric Dumazet <edumazet@google.com>
Cc: Ilpo Järvinen <ilpo.jarvinen@helsinki.fi>
Cc: Herbert Xu <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>
Cc: Maciej Żenczykowski <maze@google.com>
Cc: Neal Cardwell <ncardwell@google.com>
Cc: Tom Herbert <therbert@google.com>
Cc: Jeff Kirsher <jeffrey.t.kirsher@intel.com>
Cc: Ben Hutchings <bhutchings@solarflare.com>
Cc: Matt Carlson <mcarlson@broadcom.com>
Cc: Michael Chan <mchan@broadcom.com>
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

1 files changed, 3 insertions, 2 deletions

diff --git a/include/linux/skbuff.h b/include/linux/skbuff.h
index 4a656b5..9d28a22 100644
--- a/include/linux/skbuff.h
+++ b/include/linux/skbuff.h
@@ -470,7 +470,8 @@ struct sk_buff {
 	__u8			wifi_acked_valid:1;
 	__u8			wifi_acked:1;
 	__u8			no_fcs:1;
-	/* 9/11 bit hole (depending on ndisc_nodetype presence) */
+	__u8			head_frag:1;
+	/* 8/10 bit hole (depending on ndisc_nodetype presence) */
 	kmemcheck_bitfield_end(flags2);
 
 #ifdef CONFIG_NET_DMA
@@ -562,7 +563,7 @@ extern void consume_skb(struct sk_buff *skb);
 extern void	       __kfree_skb(struct sk_buff *skb);
 extern struct sk_buff *__alloc_skb(unsigned int size,
 				   gfp_t priority, int fclone, int node);
-extern struct sk_buff *build_skb(void *data);
+extern struct sk_buff *build_skb(void *data, unsigned int frag_size);
 static inline struct sk_buff *alloc_skb(unsigned int size,
 					gfp_t priority)
 {