Performance of CX7 with 3 flow groups versus 2

[Tony Hart]

I'm seeing an unexpected performance drop on the CX7 when using 3 groups
(with a policer) versus 3 groups (without policer) versus (2 groups without
policer).  The performance of each configuration is  72 Gbps, 104 Gbps and
124 Gbps respectively.   So the first configuration drops to almost half
the performance of the third even though all 3 are just hairpinning packets
(the policier is used to color the packet only, no fate actions are taken
as a result).

This is on a 400G link and using SWS mode.  I know there was a similar
issue reported on this mailing list recently related to SWS versus HWS
performance, but this issue seems different.

Any thoughts welcome.

thanks
tony

These are the testpmd commands used to recreate the issue...


*Common commands:*add port meter profile trtcm_rfc4115 0 1 1000 150000000
1000 1000 1

add port meter policy 0 1 g_actions end y_actions end r_actions drop  / end

create port meter 0 1 1 1 yes 0xffff 0 g 0



*3 groups with policer*
flow create 0 ingress group 0 pattern end actions jump group 1 / end

flow create 0 ingress group 1 pattern end actions meter mtr_id 1 / jump
group 2 / end

flow create 0 ingress group 2 pattern eth / ipv4 / end actions count / rss
queues 6 7 8 9 end / end



*3 groups without policer*
flow create 0 ingress group 0 pattern end actions jump group 1 / end

flow create 0 ingress group 1 pattern end actions jump group 2 / end

flow create 0 ingress group 2 pattern eth / ipv4 / end actions count / rss
queues 6 7 8 9 end / end



*2 groups without policer*
flow create 0 ingress group 0 pattern end actions jump group 1 / end

flow create 0 ingress group 1 pattern eth / ipv4 / end actions count / rss
queues 6 7 8 9 end / end

thanks,
tony

*testpmd command line*
/dpdk-testpmd -l8-14 -a81:00.0,dv_flow_en=1 -- -i --nb-cores 6 --rxq 6
--txq 6 --port-topology loop --forward-mode=rxonly --hairpinq 4
--hairpin-mode 0x10


*Versions*
mlnx-ofa_kernel-24.04-OFED.24.04.0.6.6.1.rhel9u4.x86_64
kmod-mlnx-ofa_kernel-24.04-OFED.24.04.0.6.6.1.rhel9u4.x86_64
mlnx-ofa_kernel-devel-24.04-OFED.24.04.0.6.6.1.rhel9u4.x86_64
ofed-scripts-24.04-OFED.24.04.0.6.6.x86_64

DPDK: v24.03
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