ipsec: Performance improvement of ipsec4_output_node using flow cache

Adding flow cache support to improve outbound IPv4/IPSec SPD lookup
performance. Details about flow cache:
  Mechanism:
  1. First packet of a flow will undergo linear search in SPD
     table. Once a policy match is found, a new entry will be added
     into the flow cache. From 2nd packet onwards, the policy lookup
     will happen in flow cache.
  2. The flow cache is implemented using bihash without collision
     handling. This will avoid the logic to age out or recycle the old
     flows in flow cache. Whenever a collision occurs, old entry will
     be overwritten by the new entry. Worst case is when all the 256
     packets in a batch result in collision and fall back to linear
     search. Average and best case will be O(1).
  3. The size of flow cache is fixed and decided based on the number
     of flows to be supported. The default is set to 1 million flows.
     This can be made as a configurable option as a next step.
  4. Whenever a SPD rule is added/deleted by the control plane, the
     flow cache entries will be completely deleted (reset) in the
     control plane. The assumption here is that SPD rule add/del is not
     a frequent operation from control plane. Flow cache reset is done,
     by putting the data plane in fall back mode, to bypass flow cache
     and do linear search till the SPD rule add/delete operation is
     complete. Once the rule is successfully added/deleted, the data
     plane will be allowed to make use of the flow cache. The flow
     cache will be reset only after flushing out the inflight packets
     from all the worker cores using
     vlib_worker_wait_one_loop().

  Details about bihash usage:
  1. A new bihash template (16_8) is added to support IPv4 5 tuple.
     BIHASH_KVP_PER_PAGE and BIHASH_KVP_AT_BUCKET_LEVEL are set
     to 1 in the new template. It means only one KVP is supported
     per bucket.
  2. Collision handling is avoided by calling
     BV (clib_bihash_add_or_overwrite_stale) function.
     Through the stale callback function pointer, the KVP entry
     will be overwritten during collision.
  3. Flow cache reset is done using
     BV (clib_bihash_foreach_key_value_pair) function.
     Through the callback function pointer, the KVP value is reset
     to ~0ULL.

  MRR performance numbers with 1 core, 1 ESP Tunnel, null-encrypt,
  64B for different SPD policy matching indices:

  SPD Policy index    : 1          10         100        1000
  Throughput          : MPPS/MPPS  MPPS/MPPS  MPPS/MPPS  KPPS/MPPS
  (Baseline/Optimized)
  ARM Neoverse N1     : 5.2/4.84   4.55/4.84  2.11/4.84  329.5/4.84
  ARM TX2             : 2.81/2.6   2.51/2.6   1.27/2.6   176.62/2.6
  INTEL SKX           : 4.93/4.48  4.29/4.46  2.05/4.48  336.79/4.47

  Next Steps:
  Following can be made as a configurable option through startup
  conf at IPSec level:
  1. Enable/Disable Flow cache.
  2. Bihash configuration like number of buckets and memory size.
  3. Dual/Quad loop unroll can be applied around bihash to further
     improve the performance.
  4. The same flow cache logic can be applied for IPv6 as well as in
     IPSec inbound direction. A deeper and wider flow cache using
     bihash_40_8 can replace existing bihash_16_8, to make it
     common for both IPv4 and IPv6 in both outbound and
     inbound directions.

Following changes are made based on the review comments:
1. ON/OFF flow cache through startup conf. Default: OFF
2. Flow cache stale entry detection using epoch counter.
3. Avoid host order endianness conversion during flow cache
   lookup.
4. Move IPSec startup conf to a common file.
5. Added SPD flow cache unit test case
6. Replaced bihash with vectors to implement flow cache.
7. ipsec_add_del_policy API is not mpsafe. Cleaned up
   inflight packets check in control plane.

Type: improvement
Signed-off-by: mgovind <govindarajan.Mohandoss@arm.com>
Signed-off-by: Zachary Leaf <zachary.leaf@arm.com>
Tested-by: Jieqiang Wang <jieqiang.wang@arm.com>
Change-Id: I62b4d6625fbc6caf292427a5d2046aa5672b2006

1 files changed, 5 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/src/vnet/ipsec/ipsec_cli.c b/src/vnet/ipsec/ipsec_cli.c
index bdb9c7bf698..95e8145fe92 100644
--- a/src/vnet/ipsec/ipsec_cli.c
+++ b/src/vnet/ipsec/ipsec_cli.c
@@ -427,6 +427,11 @@ ipsec_spd_show_all (vlib_main_t * vm, ipsec_main_t * im)
   pool_foreach_index (spdi, im->spds)  {
     vlib_cli_output(vm, "%U", format_ipsec_spd, spdi);
   }
+
+  if (im->flow_cache_flag)
+    {
+      vlib_cli_output (vm, "%U", format_ipsec_spd_flow_cache);
+    }
   /* *INDENT-ON* */
 }