Re: [PATCH] bpf: call get_random_u32() for random integers

[Jason A. Donenfeld]

Hi Toke,

On Tue, Dec 6, 2022 at 2:26 PM Toke Høiland-Jørgensen <toke@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> So for instance, if there's a large fixed component of the overhead of
> get_random_u32(), we could have bpf_user_rnd_u32() populate a larger
> per-CPU buffer and then just emit u32 chunks of that as long as we're
> still in the same NAPI loop as the first call. Or something to that
> effect. Not sure if this makes sense for this use case, but figured I'd
> throw the idea out there :)

Actually, this already is how get_random_u32() works! It buffers a
bunch of u32s in percpu batches, and doles them out as requested.
However, this API currently works in all contexts, including in
interrupts. So each call results in disabling irqs and reenabling
them. If I bifurcated batches into irq batches and non-irq batches, so
that we only needed to disable preemption for the non-irq batches,
that'd probably improve things quite a bit, since then the overhead
really would reduce to just a memcpy for the majority of calls. But I
don't know if adding that duplication of all code paths is really
worth the huge hassle.

Jason