Linux kernel modifications for the Kernel Hacking exam
d0dd066a0f
Many architectures support load acquire which can replace a memory
barrier and save some cycles.
A typical sequence
do {
seq = read_seqcount_begin(&s);
<something>
} while (read_seqcount_retry(&s, seq);
requires 13 cycles on an N1 Neoverse arm64 core (Ampere Altra, to be
specific) for an empty loop. Two read memory barriers are needed. One
for each of the seqcount_* functions.
We can replace the first read barrier with a load acquire of the
seqcount which saves us one barrier.
On the Altra doing so reduces the cycle count from 13 to 8.
According to ARM, this is a general improvement for the ARM64
architecture and not specific to a certain processor.
See
https://developer.arm.com/documentation/102336/0100/Load-Acquire-and-Store-Release-instructions
"Weaker ordering requirements that are imposed by Load-Acquire and
Store-Release instructions allow for micro-architectural
optimizations, which could reduce some of the performance impacts that
are otherwise imposed by an explicit memory barrier.
If the ordering requirement is satisfied using either a Load-Acquire
or Store-Release, then it would be preferable to use these
instructions instead of a DMB"
[ NOTE! This is my original minimal patch that unconditionally switches
over to using smp_load_acquire(), instead of the much more involved
and subtle patch that Christoph Lameter wrote that made it
conditional.
But Christoph gets authorship credit because I had initially thought
that we needed the more complex model, and Christoph ran with it it
and did the work. Only after looking at code generation for all the
relevant architectures, did I come to the conclusion that nobody
actually really needs the old "smp_rmb()" model.
Even architectures without load-acquire support generally do as well
or better with smp_load_acquire().
So credit to Christoph, but if this then causes issues on other
architectures, put the blame solidly on me.
Also note as part of the ruthless simplification, this gets rid of the
overly subtle optimization where some code uses a non-barrier version
of the sequence count (see the __read_seqcount_begin() users in
fs/namei.c). They then play games with their own barriers and/or with
nested sequence counts.
Those optimizations are literally meaningless on x86, and questionable
elsewhere. If somebody can show that they matter, we need to re-do
them more cleanly than "use an internal helper". - Linus ]
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter (Ampere) <cl@gentwo.org>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20240912-seq_optimize-v3-1-8ee25e04dffa@gentwo.org/
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
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| arch | ||
| block | ||
| certs | ||
| crypto | ||
| Documentation | ||
| drivers | ||
| fs | ||
| include | ||
| init | ||
| io_uring | ||
| ipc | ||
| kernel | ||
| lib | ||
| LICENSES | ||
| mm | ||
| net | ||
| rust | ||
| samples | ||
| scripts | ||
| security | ||
| sound | ||
| tools | ||
| usr | ||
| virt | ||
| .clang-format | ||
| .cocciconfig | ||
| .editorconfig | ||
| .get_maintainer.ignore | ||
| .gitattributes | ||
| .gitignore | ||
| .mailmap | ||
| .rustfmt.toml | ||
| COPYING | ||
| CREDITS | ||
| Kbuild | ||
| Kconfig | ||
| MAINTAINERS | ||
| Makefile | ||
| README | ||
Linux kernel
============
There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.
In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``. The formatted documentation can also be read online at:
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/
There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the reStructuredText markup notation.
Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.