linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] scsi: lpfc: use memcpy

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Date:   Fri, 23 Feb 2018 17:44:30 +0100
From:   Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>
To:     David Laight <David.Laight@...lab.com>
Cc:     James Smart <james.smart@...adcom.com>,
        Dick Kennedy <dick.kennedy@...adcom.com>,
        "James E.J. Bottomley" <jejb@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>,
        "Martin K. Petersen" <martin.petersen@...cle.com>,
        Hannes Reinecke <hare@...e.com>,
        Johannes Thumshirn <jthumshirn@...e.de>,
        "linux-scsi@...r.kernel.org" <linux-scsi@...r.kernel.org>,
        "linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org" <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] scsi: lpfc: use memcpy_toio instead of writeq

On Fri, Feb 23, 2018 at 5:41 PM, David Laight <David.Laight@...lab.com> wrote:
> From: Arnd Bergmann
>> Sent: 23 February 2018 15:37
>>
>> 32-bit architectures generally cannot use writeq(), so we now get a build
>> failure for the lpfc driver:
>>
>> drivers/scsi/lpfc/lpfc_sli.c: In function 'lpfc_sli4_wq_put':
>> drivers/scsi/lpfc/lpfc_sli.c:145:4: error: implicit declaration of function 'writeq'; did you mean
>> 'writeb'? [-Werror=implicit-function-declaration]
>>
>> Another problem here is that writing out actual data (unlike accessing
>> mmio registers) means we must write the data with the same endianess
>> that we have read from memory, but writeq() will perform byte swaps
>> and add barriers inbetween accesses as we do for registers.
>>
>> Using memcpy_toio() should do the right thing here, using register
>> sized stores with correct endianess conversion and barriers (i.e. none),
>> but on some architectures might fall back to byte-size access.
> ...
>
> Have you looked at the performance impact of this on x86?
> Last time I looked memcpy_toio() aliased directly to memcpy().
> memcpy() is run-time patched between several different algorithms.
> On recent Intel cpus memcpy() is implemented as 'rep movsb' relying
> on the hardware to DTRT.
> For uncached accesses (typical for io) the 'RT' has to be byte transfers.
> So instead of the 8 byte transfers (on 64 bit) you get single bytes.
> This won't be what is intended!
> memcpy_toio() should probably use 'rep movsd' for the bulk of the transfer.

I'm not that familiar with x86, but I would have guessed that on a
write-combining I/O mapping, the hardware will combine the 'rep movsb'
output data the same was as on a cacheable mapping.

      Arnd