Irqbalance is a Linux daemon that distributes interrupts over multiple logical CPUs. This may result in improved overall performance and even reduced power consumption.
To get started install the package:
opkg update && opkg install irqbalance
If you run a main snapshot build you can also install the new luci-app-irqbalance.
It will not be enabled by default. Set the following enable line to 1, save and close:
nano /etc/config/irqbalance
Now start the daemon:
/etc/init.d/irqbalance start
You're done! Performance should now be improved for multi-core targets.
In general, the items below are not necessary for irqbalance to function, however they are used for affinity, interrupt options, and status checks.
To check the status of irqbalance simply use service:
service irqbalance
To set an IRQ to run on a specific CPU core, use echo to write the CPU mask, as a hexadecimal number, to the smp_affinity entry of the IRQ. In this example, we are instructing the interrupt with IRQ number 142 to run on CPU0:
echo 1 > /proc/irq/124/smp_affinity
To set the core affinity use a bitmask, e.g.: 1 = CPU0, 2 = CPU1, 3 = CPU1 and 2.
cat /proc/irq/default_smp_affinity 3
To monitor the irqbalance load across cores check:
cat /proc/interrupts
Irqbalance will result in performance benefits for multicore targets where there is enough CPU overhead to handle context switching. However on 2core targets, outside of benchmarking alone, there may be performance losses. This can happen if affinity selection is not done carefully (e.g. pinning ethernet to cpu0 and wireless to cpu1). This may result in increased latency or overhead such as with simultaneous users on LAN and WLAN. Irqbalance is more viable on 4core systems and up, however your mileage may vary. See forum discussion: https://forum.openwrt.org/t/kong-pro-firmware-for-ipq806x-r7500-r7800-ea8500/55694/395.
Example /proc/interrupts outputs for some common targets:
CPU0 CPU1 17: 0 0 GIC-0 27 Edge gt 18: 31286472 45819630 GIC-0 29 Edge twd 19: 0 0 MPIC 5 Level armada_370_xp_per_cpu_tick 21: 22209654 0 GIC-0 34 Level mv64xxx_i2c 22: 21 0 GIC-0 44 Level ttyS0 36: 15572107 0 MPIC 8 Level eth1 37: 2380424 0 MPIC 12 Level eth0 38: 8759 0 GIC-0 50 Level ehci_hcd:usb1 39: 0 0 GIC-0 51 Level f1090000.crypto 40: 0 0 GIC-0 52 Level f1090000.crypto 41: 0 0 GIC-0 58 Level ahci-mvebu[f10a8000.sata] 42: 40796 0 GIC-0 116 Level f10d0000.flash 43: 211416 0 GIC-0 57 Level mmc0 44: 453943 0 GIC-0 49 Level xhci-hcd:usb2 45: 2 0 GIC-0 54 Level f1060800.xor 46: 2 0 GIC-0 97 Level f1060900.xor 47: 0 0 f1018100.gpio 24 Edge gpio-keys 48: 0 0 f1018100.gpio 29 Edge gpio-keys 49: 1430 22168991 GIC-0 61 Level mwlwifi 50: 24566424 0 GIC-0 65 Level mwlwifi IPI0: 0 1 CPU wakeup interrupts IPI1: 0 0 Timer broadcast interrupts IPI2: 6069090 6516981 Rescheduling interrupts IPI3: 27303 7712031 Function call interrupts IPI4: 0 0 CPU stop interrupts IPI5: 0 0 IRQ work interrupts IPI6: 0 0 completion interrupts Err: 0
CPU0 CPU1 16: 4855869 10819277 GIC-0 18 Edge gp_timer 18: 33 0 GIC-0 51 Edge qcom_rpm_ack 19: 0 0 GIC-0 53 Edge qcom_rpm_err 20: 0 0 GIC-0 54 Edge qcom_rpm_wakeup 29: 0 0 GIC-0 202 Level adm_dma 30: 29055904 1445708 GIC-0 255 Level eth0 31: 42474368 940190 GIC-0 258 Level eth1 32: 8903 628 GIC-0 130 Level bam_dma 33: 0 0 GIC-0 128 Level bam_dma 34: 31042 2157 GIC-0 136 Level mmci-pl18x (cmd) 36: 0 0 PCI-MSI 0 Edge aerdrv 38: 0 0 PCI-MSI 134217728 Edge aerdrv 39: 7 0 GIC-0 184 Level msm_serial0 40: 386087 0 GIC-0 187 Level 1a280000.spi 41: 1 0 msmgpio 53 Edge keys 42: 2 0 msmgpio 54 Edge keys 43: 2 0 msmgpio 65 Edge keys 44: 0 0 GIC-0 142 Level xhci-hcd:usb1 45: 182350 12826 GIC-0 237 Level xhci-hcd:usb3 46: 8891000 0 PCI-MSI 524288 Edge ath10k_pci 47: 16305129 0 PCI-MSI 134742016 Edge ath10k_pci IPI0: 0 0 CPU wakeup interrupts IPI1: 0 0 Timer broadcast interrupts IPI2: 1328451 4837561 Rescheduling interrupts IPI3: 1110 17065108 Function call interrupts IPI4: 0 0 CPU stop interrupts IPI5: 5436588 7683214 IRQ work interrupts IPI6: 0 0 completion interrupts Err: 0
CPU0 CPU1 CPU2 CPU3 3: 7646504 8443043 8250258 670362 GICv2 30 Level arch_timer 11: 172894 0 0 0 GICv2 65 Level fe00b880.mailbox 14: 2 0 0 0 GICv2 153 Level uart-pl011 17: 1705 0 0 0 GICv2 114 Level DMA IRQ 24: 7 0 0 0 GICv2 66 Level VCHIQ doorbell 25: 19817 0 938869 0 GICv2 158 Level mmc1, mmc0 31: 16988884 0 0 0 GICv2 189 Level eth0 32: 1497 10540404 0 0 GICv2 190 Level eth0 38: 0 0 0 0 GICv2 175 Level PCIe PME, aerdrv 39: 30845207 0 0 0 BRCM STB PCIe MSI 524288 Edge xhci_hcd IPI0: 518033 734978 575403 839272 Rescheduling interrupts IPI1: 11257 7960888 8129528 11536 Function call interrupts IPI2: 0 0 0 0 CPU stop interrupts IPI3: 0 0 0 0 CPU stop (for crash dump) interrupts IPI4: 0 0 0 0 Timer broadcast interrupts IPI5: 466242 475458 500626 321304 IRQ work interrupts IPI6: 0 0 0 0 CPU wake-up interrupts Err: 0
Note 1: man page: https://linux.die.net/man/1/irqbalance
Note 2: upstream github: https://github.com/Irqbalance/irqbalance/