Re: [PATCH] memcpy_flushcache: use cache flusing for larger lengths

[Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>]

On Tue, Apr 7, 2020 at 8:02 AM Mikulas Patocka <mpatocka@redhat.com> wrote:
>
> [ resending this to x86 maintainers ]
>
> Hi
>
> I tested performance of various methods how to write to optane-based
> persistent memory, and found out that non-temporal stores achieve
> throughput 1.3 GB/s. 8 cached stores immediatelly followed by clflushopt
> or clwb achieve throughput 1.6 GB/s.
>
> memcpy_flushcache uses non-temporal stores, I modified it to use cached
> stores + clflushopt and it improved performance of the dm-writecache
> target significantly:
>
> dm-writecache throughput:
> (dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mapper/wc bs=64k oflag=direct)
> writecache block size   512             1024            2048            4096
> movnti                  496 MB/s        642 MB/s        725 MB/s        744 MB/s
> clflushopt              373 MB/s        688 MB/s        1.1 GB/s        1.2 GB/s
>
> For block size 512, movnti works better, for larger block sizes,
> clflushopt is better.

This should use clwb instead of clflushopt, the clwb macri
automatically converts back to clflushopt if clwb is not supported.

>
> I was also testing the novafs filesystem, it is not upstream, but it
> benefitted from similar change in __memcpy_flushcache and
> __copy_user_nocache:
> write throughput on big files - movnti: 662 MB/s, clwb: 1323 MB/s
> write throughput on small files - movnti: 621 MB/s, clwb: 1013 MB/s
>
>
> I submit this patch for __memcpy_flushcache that improves dm-writecache
> performance.
>
> Other ideas - should we introduce memcpy_to_pmem instead of modifying
> memcpy_flushcache and move this logic there? Or should I modify the
> dm-writecache target directly to use clflushopt with no change to the
> architecture-specific code?

This also needs to mention your analysis that showed that this can
have negative cache pollution effects [1], so I'm not sure how to
decide when to make the tradeoff. Once we have movdir64b the tradeoff
equation changes yet again:

[1]: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-nvdimm/alpine.LRH.2.02.2004010941310.23210@file01.intranet.prod.int.rdu2.redhat.com/


>
> Mikulas
>
>
>
>
> From: Mikulas Patocka <mpatocka@redhat.com>
>
> I tested dm-writecache performance on a machine with Optane nvdimm and it
> turned out that for larger writes, cached stores + cache flushing perform
> better than non-temporal stores. This is the throughput of dm-writecache
> measured with this command:
> dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mapper/wc bs=64 oflag=direct
>
> block size      512             1024            2048            4096
> movnti          496 MB/s        642 MB/s        725 MB/s        744 MB/s
> clflushopt      373 MB/s        688 MB/s        1.1 GB/s        1.2 GB/s
>
> We can see that for smaller block, movnti performs better, but for larger
> blocks, clflushopt has better performance.
>
> This patch changes the function __memcpy_flushcache accordingly, so that
> with size >= 768 it performs cached stores and cache flushing. Note that
> we must not use the new branch if the CPU doesn't have clflushopt - in
> that case, the kernel would use inefficient "clflush" instruction that has
> very bad performance.
>
> Signed-off-by: Mikulas Patocka <mpatocka@redhat.com>
>
> ---
>  arch/x86/lib/usercopy_64.c |   36 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>  1 file changed, 36 insertions(+)
>
> Index: linux-2.6/arch/x86/lib/usercopy_64.c
> ===================================================================
> --- linux-2.6.orig/arch/x86/lib/usercopy_64.c   2020-03-24 15:15:36.644945091 -0400
> +++ linux-2.6/arch/x86/lib/usercopy_64.c        2020-03-30 07:17:51.450290007 -0400
> @@ -152,6 +152,42 @@ void __memcpy_flushcache(void *_dst, con
>                         return;
>         }
>
> +       if (static_cpu_has(X86_FEATURE_CLFLUSHOPT) && size >= 768 && likely(boot_cpu_data.x86_clflush_size == 64)) {
> +               while (!IS_ALIGNED(dest, 64)) {
> +                       asm("movq    (%0), %%r8\n"
> +                           "movnti  %%r8,   (%1)\n"
> +                           :: "r" (source), "r" (dest)
> +                           : "memory", "r8");
> +                       dest += 8;
> +                       source += 8;
> +                       size -= 8;
> +               }
> +               do {
> +                       asm("movq    (%0), %%r8\n"
> +                           "movq   8(%0), %%r9\n"
> +                           "movq  16(%0), %%r10\n"
> +                           "movq  24(%0), %%r11\n"
> +                           "movq    %%r8,   (%1)\n"
> +                           "movq    %%r9,  8(%1)\n"
> +                           "movq   %%r10, 16(%1)\n"
> +                           "movq   %%r11, 24(%1)\n"
> +                           "movq  32(%0), %%r8\n"
> +                           "movq  40(%0), %%r9\n"
> +                           "movq  48(%0), %%r10\n"
> +                           "movq  56(%0), %%r11\n"
> +                           "movq    %%r8, 32(%1)\n"
> +                           "movq    %%r9, 40(%1)\n"
> +                           "movq   %%r10, 48(%1)\n"
> +                           "movq   %%r11, 56(%1)\n"
> +                           :: "r" (source), "r" (dest)
> +                           : "memory", "r8", "r9", "r10", "r11");
> +                       clflushopt((void *)dest);
> +                       dest += 64;
> +                       source += 64;
> +                       size -= 64;
> +               } while (size >= 64);
> +       }
> +
>         /* 4x8 movnti loop */
>         while (size >= 32) {
>                 asm("movq    (%0), %%r8\n"
>