How do I confirm if my QAT device supports compression?

[xuqing]

How do I confirm if my QAT device supports compression? My device uses the 200xx driver and the CPU is https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/226114/intel-xeon-d1734nt-processor-15m-cache-up-to-3-10-ghz/specifications.html

[Ronny_G_Intel]

Hi xuqing,

You may refer to the following article applicable for Intel® Xeon® D-2700 and D-1700 processors: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/processors/xeon-d/network-segments-product-brief.html 

Intel® QuickAssist Technology (Intel® QAT) with inline IPSec support accelerates encryption and compression; the platform is capable of driving up to 100 Gbps crypto and 70 Gbps compression. The crypto capability also includes inline IPSec, which enables customers to free up precious compute cores for other applications.

Let me know if you need further information.

Regards,

Ronny G

[xuqing]

Hi Ronny G,

However, when I use dpdk to search for devices (the command is dpdk/usertools/dpdk-devbind.py --status), I can find encryption devices but not compression devices. My dpdk version is v23.11. I want to ask if some configuration (such as specific firmware) is required to use compression devices, or if my QAT device does not support compression?

Regards,

xuqing

[xuqing]

Also, when I was doing performance testing, I found that the encryption device also could not reach 100Gbps, the highest was only 32Gpbs, is this correct?

[Ronny_G_Intel]

Hi xuqing,

I would recommend that you use cpa_sample_code instead of DPDK (DPDK is focused in providing high-performance packet processing frameworks for building software-defined networking and network function virtualization applications, not really into compression).

Please refer to the following website for cpa_sample_code details:

https://intel.github.io/quickassist/GSG/2.X/sampleapplications.html#performance-sample-code

Note: Before running cpa_sample_code make sure QAT is properly configured, refer to:

https://intel.github.io/quickassist/GSG/2.X/installation.html

On the other hand, how are you testing encryption device performance? And, what are you using as a benchmark for your results? Can you share the environment details?

Regards,

Ronny G

[Ronny_G_Intel]

Hi xuqing,

I am just checking if you had a chance to check into in my previous note and try cpa_sample_code instead of DPDK.

Please let me know.

Regards,

Ronny G

[xuqing]

Hi Ronny,

Thank you very much for your reply. I have tried cpa_sample_code and found that it can support compression. As for crypto performance testing, I used dpdk-test-crypto-perf  for testing before, and my CPU information is as follows, and my QAT device driver is 200xx.

The dpdk commands used for the test are as follows, In this command I used two VFs and one DPDK worker thread.

${dpdk_dir}/build/app/dpdk-test-crypto-perf --socket-mem 2048,0 --legacy-mem -a 0000:01:01.0 -a 0000:01:02.0 -l 1,6 -n 4 -- --buffer-sz 64,128,256,512,1024,2048,4096,8192,16384 --optype cipher-only --ptest throughput --cipher-key-sz 64 --devtype crypto_qat --auth-op generate --burst-sz 32 --total-ops 30000000 --silent --digest-sz 20 --cipher-algo aes-xts --cipher-op encrypt

The test results are shown in the figure below, and maximum bandwidth is about 32Gbps.

And when I tested it with cpa_sample_code, the encrypted bandwidth for 4K was 27730Mbps, which is much less than 100Gbps.

Best Regards.

xuqing

[Ronny_G_Intel]

Hi xuqing,

Can you please provide with the whole cpa_sample_code report?

Can you also let me know if you are using any particular QAT configuration?

Regards,

Ronny G

[xuqing]

Hi Ronny G,

I didn't use any particular QAT configuration.The cpa_smaple_result.txt is the whole cpa_sample_code report, and I only run symmetric code tests(cpa_sample_code runTests=1).

200xx_dev0.txt is the configuration file for the QAT device.

Regards,

xuqing

[Ronny_G_Intel]

Hi xuqing,

Thank you for sending the information I requested. After reviewing the cpa_sample_results.txt and 200xx_dev0.txt files, everything appears to be in order. I attempted to find a comparable system within our resources to conduct a parallel assessment, but I was unable to find similar hardware to replicate the results.

To my knowledge, we do not have a standardized QAT performance matrix or benchmarking reference available. Could you please clarify what benchmarks or documentation you are using to evaluate your results? Are these performance metrics tailored to your specific QAT device, or are they based on general processor performance data?

Additionally, I suggest consulting our Performance Optimization Guide for further insights. You can find it at https://intel.github.io/quickassist/PERF/index.html. This guide may provide valuable information on how to optimize the performance of your QAT device.

Regards,

Ronny G