BRCM 57414 Performance Test

[Patrick Robb]

Hi Ajit,

One of the tests we run for the BRCM 57414 NIC in the dpdk community
lab is a single core forwarding test in which we try to match line
rate on the NIC, and protect against any performance regressions in
DPDK. We track the MPPS forwarded between interfaces on the DUT,
compare that metric against the most recent "baseline" run, and if the
delta is more than 5% it is a fail. So the idea is if a significant
regression is introduced on a patch, CI testing catches that.

Right now on one of our ARM systems with brcm57414 this test is having
high variance... more than the 5% threshold in some cases. I think
this may in some way relate to the maintenance we did a few weeks back
- we were seeing like .2% variance before. The expected throughput
seems consistent, but the results have higher variance than normal.
Obviously something is slightly wrong, and the system needs to be
re-tuned a little or something. We can look at it (prefer to do any
maintenance once all RCs are complete), but in the interim I want to
just bump the accepted Delta from 5% to 7%, just to stop the false
fails, but still maintain some coverage. Once we tune the system and
reduce the results variance, we can return to 5%.

Does this sound fine to you?

Thanks,
Patrick

-- 
Patrick Robb

Technical Service Manager

UNH InterOperability Laboratory

21 Madbury Rd, Suite 100, Durham, NH 03824

www.iol.unh.edu