linux-kernel - Re: [patch 04/41] cpu ops: Core piece for generic atomic per cpu operations

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Date:	Fri, 6 Jun 2008 09:59:12 +1000
From:	Rusty Russell <rusty@...tcorp.com.au>
To:	Mike Travis <travis@....com>
Cc:	Christoph Lameter <clameter@....com>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	linux-arch@...r.kernel.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	David Miller <davem@...emloft.net>,
	Eric Dumazet <dada1@...mosbay.com>,
	Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>
Subject: Re: [patch 04/41] cpu ops: Core piece for generic atomic per cpu operations

On Thursday 05 June 2008 04:18:19 Mike Travis wrote:
> > cpu_local_inc() does all this: it takes the name of a local_t var, and is
> > expected to increment this cpu's version of that.  You ripped this out
> > and called it CPU_INC().
>
> Hi,
>
> I'm attempting to test both approaches to compare the object generated in
> order to understand the issues involved here.  Here's my code:
>
>         void test_cpu_inc(int *s)
>         {
>                 __CPU_INC(s);
>         }
>
>         void test_local_inc(local_t *t)
>         {
>                 __local_inc(THIS_CPU(t));
>         }
>
>         void test_cpu_local_inc(local_t *t)
>         {
>                 __cpu_local_inc(t);
>         }
>
> But I don't know how I can use cpu_local_inc because the pointer to the
> object is not &__get_cpu_var(l):

Yes.  Because the only true per-cpu vars are the static ones, cpu_local_inc() 
only works on identifiers, not arbitrary pointers.  Once this is fixed, we 
should be enhancing the infrastructure to allow that (AFAICT it's not too 
hard, but we should add an __percpu marker for sparse).

> At the minimum, we would need a new local_t op to get the correct
> CPU_ALLOC'd pointer value for the increment.  These new local_t ops for
> CPU_ALLOC'd variables could use CPU_XXX primitives to implement them, or
> just a base val_to_ptr primitive to replace __get_cpu_var().

I think the latter: __get_cpu_ptr() perhaps?

> I did notice this in local.h:
>
> 	 * X86_64: This could be done better if we moved the per cpu data directly
> 	 * after GS.
>
> ... which it now is, so true per_cpu variables could be optimized better as
> well.

Indeed.

>
> Also, the above cpu_local_wrap(...) adds:
>
> 	#define cpu_local_wrap(l)               \
> 	({                                      \
> 	        preempt_disable();              \
> 	        (l);                            \
> 	        preempt_enable();               \
> 	})                                      \
>
> ... and there isn't a non-preemption version that I can find.

Yes, this should be fixed.  I thought i386 had optimized versions pre-merge, 
but I was wrong (%gs for per-cpu came later, and noone cleaned up these naive 
versions).  Did you want me to write them?

I actually think that using local_t == atomic_t is better than 
preempt_disable/enable for most archs which can't do atomic deref-and-inc.

> One other distinction is CPU_INC increments an arbitrary sized variable
> while local_inc requires a local_t variable.  This may not make it usable
> in all cases.

You might be right, but note that local_t is 64 bit on 64-bit platforms.  And 
speculation of possible use cases isn't a good reason to rip out working 
infrastructure :)

Cheers,
Rusty.


>
> Thanks,
> Mike


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