Tvheadend

Looking to reduce cpu usage, I noticed that the libdvbcsa library from debain stretch was using a maximum batch size of 64 packets. Looking at the package, it shows it was compiled with both "enable-mmx" and "enable-sse2", but it appears to use mmx instead of sse2, which uses a batch size of 128 packets. I downloaded the source code (https://code.videolan.org/videolan/libdvbcsa/tree/master) and found that if you configure with both options, it uses just mmx. So, after configuring for sse2 and building, I now see tvheadend using 128 packet batches to decrypt.

Then I also found a fork with newer updates from the videolan.org code. (https://github.com/glenvt18/libdvbcsa)

It supports the SSSE3 extention:

./configure --help

  --enable-uint32         Use native 32 bits integers for bitslice
  --enable-uint64         Use native 64 bits integers for bitslice
  --enable-mmx            Use MMX for bitslice
  --enable-sse2           Use SSE2 for bitslice
  --enable-ssse3          Use SSSE3 for bitslice
  --enable-avx2           Use AVX2 for bitslice
  --enable-altivec        Use AltiVec for bitslice
  --enable-neon           Use NEON for bitslice
  --enable-alt-sbox       Use alternative sbox lookup, may be faster on some
                          targets

Although my cpu supports sse4, it does not support sse3, however when using this version with "--enable-sse2" the performance was a little better than the original videolan.org version with the same option.

Using this version, my old 3 core cpu usage has dropped from 16-18% to 4-6% while descrambling similar content. So, anyone doing descrambling may want to look into which libdvbcsa library they are using and whether a better version can be used.

I have created a related pull request that, when used with "--trace tvhcsa" it will report the libdvbcsa batch size being used by tvheadend.

[  TRACE] tvhcsa: 0x7f3a70004a80: service "SERVICE" using CSA batch size = 128 for decryption

see: https://tvheadend.org/issues/5393