Netflix Optimized FreeBSD's Network Stack More Than Doubled AMD EPYC Performance

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Netflix Optimized FreeBSD's Network Stack More Than Doubled AMD EPYC Performance

Drew Gallatin of Netflix presented at the recent EuroBSDcon 2019 conference in Norway on the company's network stack optimizations to FreeBSD. Netflix was working on being able to deliver 200Gb/s network performance for video streaming out of Intel Xeon and AMD EPYC servers, to which they are now at 190Gb/s+ and in the process that doubled the potential of EPYC Naples/Rome servers and also very hefty upgrades too for Intel...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Netflix-NUMA-FreeBSD-Optimized

[Templar82]

I'm not trying to start a software licence war, but I assume all their code is closed source and these improvements wont make it back to FreeBSD?

[Michael]

I'm not trying to start a software licence war, but I assume all their code is closed source and these improvements wont make it back to FreeBSD?

I haven't checked yet to see if these changes all landed in -CURRENT yet, but Netflix does have a pretty good track record of contributing to upstream FreeBSD.

[mrugiero]

I'm not trying to start a software licence war, but I assume all their code is closed source and these improvements wont make it back to FreeBSD?

I'm not interested enough to do the homework, but I'd expect not.
Not because Netflix are good guys or the BSD license is better, but simply because their secret sauce is not the server efficiency, but the copyrighted content they host and stream.
They need efficiency to run the business, but it's not what they actually sell.

[rockmen1]

for those who's interested, this is the video of talk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NSzkYSX5nY&list=PLskKNopggjc6NssLc8GEGSiFYJLYdlTQx&index=22&t=0s

[NateHubbard]

I'm not interested enough to do the homework, but I'd expect not.
Not because Netflix are good guys or the BSD license is better, but simply because their secret sauce is not the server efficiency, but the copyrighted content they host and stream.
They need efficiency to run the business, but it's not what they actually sell.

While that does seem reasonable, it also wouldn't be the first time that a business wasn't willing to hand over their operating efficiencies to any competitor that wanted it.

[mrugiero]

While that does seem reasonable, it also wouldn't be the first time that a business wasn't willing to hand over their operating efficiencies to any competitor that wanted it.

That's true. At the same time, does any of the other stream providers big enough to care about this level of efficiency use FreeBSD? If none do, then there's no risk in giving it away, considering how expensive migration can be.
That doesn't change the fact that sometimes companies keep it close just because.

[starshipeleven]

I'm not trying to start a software licence war, but I assume all their code is closed source and these improvements wont make it back to FreeBSD?

Nah, Netflix is pretty friendly towards FreeBSD, they usually contribute back and are the third biggest monetary sponsor ( https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donors/ ) of the FreeBSD foundation.

They are also friendly towards other opensource projects they use too.

[edwaleni]

I love it when i see these type of optimizations.

It would be interesting to know what exactly those NUMA updates were and did they give up something to reach the desired bandwidth.

I was curious on why they didn't report any efficiencies on AMD after they reached the desired bandwidth, the last remark said it all.

"AMD's tools are lacking (even on Linux)."

[starshipeleven]

While that does seem reasonable, it also wouldn't be the first time that a business wasn't willing to hand over their operating efficiencies to any competitor that wanted it.

Media industry lives on regional exclusives much more than on better infrastructure and technology, and it's been like that since ages ago.

Netflix is not really risking much, and they are smart enough to understand it and not act like everything is their secret sauce.