When will the new BCE driver in HEAD be incorporated into RELENG_6?

[Conrad Burger]

On 19/10/06, Bill Moran <wmoran at collaborativefusion.com> wrote:
> In response to Jason Thomson <jason.thomson at mintel.com>:
>
> > Scott Long wrote:
> >  > Conrad Burger wrote:
> >  >
> >  >> Hi
> >  >>
> >  >> It looks like there is a "new"  version of the bce driver in HEAD.
> >  >> When will it be incorporated into  Releng_6?
> >  >
> >  >
> >  > It will be merged when someone, preferably 2-3 people, tell me that
> >  > the changes in HEAD work for them.  So far, no one has.
> >  >
> >  > Scott
> >  > _______________________________________________
> >
> > Using the driver from HEAD* in the latest RELENG_6 didn't fix our
> > problems.
> >
> > We could still trigger the Watchdog timeout when copying a local file to
> > an NFS mounted filesystem (UDP mount, GigE speeds).
>
> Same here, although it seemed to require a lot more effort to produce the
> problem.
>
> I see there have been additional updates to the driver in the past 10
> hours.  I'll grab those and try again to see if they help any.
>
> --
> Bill Moran
> Collaborative Fusion Inc.
>

Would it be possible for someone to provide instructions on how to
compile the new bce driver in HEAD on RELENG_6?

Just to give you an idea of the problem we are sitting with.
Attached is an image of a comparison between a FreeBSD 5.4 with em and
a FreeBSD 6.2-pre with bce. The blue line is the 5.4 system. You will
notice how smooth the graph is for the 5.4 system. The image can also
be downloaded at
"http://www.mxit.co.za/mxa_227430610303000_sess.png_bytesinout.png"

Both systems run the same java app and both receive the same load.
On the 6.2-pre network I/Os sometime takes up to 7 seconds to complete.

We are starting to think that the performance difference  might have
something to do with synchronization within the bce dirver/SMP network
stack... we don't know enough so any help would be much appreciated!

Does anyone know how to disable interrupt coalescing on the bce driver?

Regards
Conrad