From: Andi Kleen <ak@muc.de>
To: akpm@osdl.org
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, jh@suse.cz
Subject: [PATCH] Use -funit-at-a-time when possible
Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 09:46:54 +0100 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20040114084654.GA1858@averell> (raw)
The upcomming gcc 3.4 has a new compilation mode called unit-at-a-time.
What it does is to first load the whole file into memory and then generate
the output. This allows it to use a better inlining strategy, drop unused
static functions and use -mregparm automatically for static functions.
It does not seem to compile significantly slower.
This is also available in some of the 3.3 based "hammer branch"
compilers used in distributions (at least in SuSE and Mandrake)
Some tests show impressive .text shrinkage from unit-at-a-time.
e.g. here is the same kernel compiled with -fno-unit-at-a-time and
-funit-at-a-time with a gcc 3.4 snapshot. The gains are really
impressive:
text data bss dec hex filename
4129346 708629 207240 5045215 4cfbdf vmlinux-nounitatatime
3999250 674853 207208 4881311 4a7b9f vmlinux-unitatatime
.text shrinks by over 130KB!. And .data shrinks too.
At first look the numbers look nearly too good to be true, but they have been
verified with several configurations and seem to be real. It looks like
we have a lot of stupid inlines or dead functions. I'm really not
sure why it is that much better. But it's hard to argue with hard
numbers.
[A bloat-o-meter comparision between the two vmlinuxes can be found in
http://www.firstfloor.org/~andi/unit-vs-no-unit.gz . It doesn't show
any obvious candidates unfortunately, just lots of small changes]
With the gcc 3.3-hammer from SuSE 9.0 the gains are a bit smaller, but
still noticeable (>100KB on .text)
Enabling -funit-at-a-time requires at least one kernel patch (the
"noinline" patch I sent earlier), on top of the no always inline patch required
to make it compile on gcc 3.4.
This patch enables -funit-at-a-time by default when it is available.
-Andi
--- linux-34/Makefile-o 2004-01-09 09:27:08.000000000 +0100
+++ linux-34/Makefile 2004-01-14 09:23:10.486613056 +0100
@@ -445,6 +446,10 @@
CFLAGS += -g
endif
+# Enable unit-at-a-time mode when possible. It shrinks the
+# kernel considerably.
+CFLAGS += $(call check_gcc,-funit-at-a-time,)
+
# warn about C99 declaration after statement
CFLAGS += $(call check_gcc,-Wdeclaration-after-statement,)
reply other threads:[~2004-01-14 8:47 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: [no followups] expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=20040114084654.GA1858@averell \
--to=ak@muc.de \
--cc=akpm@osdl.org \
--cc=jh@suse.cz \
--cc=linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).