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> > > > > >
> > > > > > On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 12:01 AM Honnappa Nagarahalli
> > > > > > <honnappa.nagaraha...@arm.com> wrote:
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Hello,
> > > > > > >         Performance of L3fwd example application is one of
> > > > > > > the key
> > > > > > benchmarks in DPDK. However, the application does not have
> > > > > > many debugging statistics to understand the performance
> > > > > > issues. We have added L3fwd as another mode/stream to testpmd
> > > > > > which provides
> > > > enough
> > > > > > statistics at various levels. This has allowed us to debug the
> > > > > > performance issues effectively.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > There is more work to be done to get it to upstreamable
> > > > > > > state. I am
> > > > > > wondering if such a patch is helpful for others and if the
> > > > > > community would be interested in taking a look. Please let me
> > > > > > know
> > > what you think.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > We are using app/proc-info/ to attach and analyze the performance.
> > > > > > That helps to analyze the unmodified application. I think, if
> > > > > > something is missing in proc-info app, in my opinion it is
> > > > > > better to enhance proc-info so that it can help other third-party
> applications.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Just my 2c.
> > > > > Thanks Jerin. We will explore that.
> > > >
> > > > I agree it is dangerous to rely too much on testpmd for everything.
> > > > Please tell us what in testpmd could be useful out of it.
> > > >
> > > Things that are very helpful in testpmd are: 1) HW statistics from
> > > the NIC 2) Forwarding stats 3) Burst stats (indication of headroom
> > > availability) 4) Easy to set parameters like RX and TX queue depths
> > > (among others) without having to recompile.
> >
> > [Kathleen Capella]
> > Thank you for the suggestion of app/proc-info. I've tried it out with
> > l3fwd and see that it does have the HW stats from the NIC and the forwarding
> stats.
> > However, it does not have the burst stats testpmd offers, nor the
> 
> One option to see such  level of debugging would be to have
> - Create a memzone in the primary process
> - Application under test can update the stats in memzone based on the code
> flow
> - proc-info can read the counters updated by application under test using the
> memzone object got through rte_memzone_lookup()
Agreed. Currently, using app/proc-info does not provide this ability. We cannot 
add this capability to app/proc-info as these stats would be specific to L3fwd 
application.

> 
> Another approach will be using rte_trace()[1] for debugging/tracing by adding
> tracepoints in l3fwd for such events.
> It has a timestamp and the trace format is opensource trace
> format(CTF(Common trace format)), so that we can use post posting tools to
> analyze.
> [1]
> https://doc.dpdk.org/guides/prog_guide/trace_lib.html
This is good for analyzing an incident. I think it is an overhead for 
development purposes.

> 
> 
> > ability to easily change parameters without having to recompile, which
> > helps reduce debugging time significantly.

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