Re: [PATCH] arm64/mm: save memory access in check_and_switch_context() fast switch path

[Pingfan Liu <kernelfans@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Jul 3, 2020 at 6:13 PM Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@arm.com> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Jul 03, 2020 at 01:44:39PM +0800, Pingfan Liu wrote:
> > The cpu_number and __per_cpu_offset cost two different cache lines, and may
> > not exist after a heavy user space load.
> >
> > By replacing per_cpu(active_asids, cpu) with this_cpu_ptr(&active_asids) in
> > fast path, register is used and these memory access are avoided.
>
> How about:
>
> | On arm64, smp_processor_id() reads a per-cpu `cpu_number` variable,
> | using the per-cpu offset stored in the tpidr_el1 system register. In
> | some cases we generate a per-cpu address with a sequence like:
> |
> | | cpu_ptr = &per_cpu(ptr, smp_processor_id());
> |
> | Which potentially incurs a cache miss for both `cpu_number` and the
> | in-memory `__per_cpu_offset` array. This can be written more optimally
> | as:
> |
> | | cpu_ptr = this_cpu_ptr(ptr);
> |
> | ... which only needs the offset from tpidr_el1, and does not need to
> | load from memory.
Appreciate for your clear document.
>
> > By replacing per_cpu(active_asids, cpu) with this_cpu_ptr(&active_asids) in
> > fast path, register is used and these memory access are avoided.
>
> Do you have any numbers that show benefit here? It's not clear to me how
> often the above case would apply where the cahes would also be hot for
> everything else we need, and numbers would help to justify that.
Initially, I was just abstracted by the macro __my_cpu_offset
implement, and came to this question. But following your thinking, I
realized data is needed to make things clear.

I have finished a test with 5.8.0-rc4 kernel on a 46 cpus qualcomm machine.
command: time -p make all -j138

Before this patch:
real 291.86
user 11050.18
sys 362.91

After this patch
real 291.11
user 11055.62
sys 363.39

As the data, it shows a very small improvement.

Thanks,
Pingfan

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