Avago Technologies LSI7104EP-LC - Manual (Page 69)

OpenBoot BIOS 4-13
Ver. 2.0 Copyright © 2005-2006 by LSI Logic Corporation. All rights reserved.
4.7.5 Interrupt Coalescing
The LSI Logic host adapters can complete multiple I/O requests per host
interrupt. Interrupt coalescing is used to reduce CPU interrupts by
pooling multiple disk command completions (I/O) into one interrupt. This
feature may be enabled or disabled.
LSI Logic has performed significant testing under multiple I/O conditions,
and has determined that interrupt coalescing can be very valuable for
small transfer lengths or random, transaction-oriented I/O workloads. For
this type of workload, LSI Logic recommends that the Interrupt
Coalescing values be set to a queue depth of 9, with a timeout of
1280
μs (0x500). This means that the host is interrupted only once for 9
I/Os processed by the chip, unless 1280
μs have passed since the host
was last interrupted. If the workload is of a large transfer length and
sequential, LSI Logic recommends that interrupt coalescing be disabled,
to prevent performance degradation.
Although LSI Logic has determined that these settings are optimal for a
wide variety of situations, your own I/O load may benefit from a deeper
queue or a longer timeout. LSI Logic provides a mechanism to modify
these values and write them to the nonvolatile EEPROM on the adapter.
Select the port or adapter shown (use the port name your system assigns):
ok select /pci@8,700000/IntraServer,fc@1
Then enter commands as shown in the following example:
ok show-interrupt-coalescing
Interrupt coalescing timeout is 500 (1280 decimal)
microseconds
Interrupt coalescing depth is 9 (9 decimal)
ok set-interrupt-coalescing
Note: The OpenBoot BIOS provides help when you enter a
command that does contain the proper arguments. In this
case, OpenBoot responds with:
usage is set-interrupt-coalescing
ok 100 8 set-interrupt-coalescing