linux-kernel - Re: [tip:perfcounters/core] perf_counter: x86: Fix call-chain support to use NMI-safe methods

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Message-ID: <20090615200619.GA10632@Krystal>
Date:	Mon, 15 Jun 2009 16:06:19 -0400
From:	Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@...ymtl.ca>
To:	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>
Cc:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>, mingo@...hat.com,
	hpa@...or.com, paulus@...ba.org, acme@...hat.com,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, a.p.zijlstra@...llo.nl,
	penberg@...helsinki.fi, vegard.nossum@...il.com, efault@....de,
	jeremy@...p.org, npiggin@...e.de, tglx@...utronix.de,
	linux-tip-commits@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [tip:perfcounters/core] perf_counter: x86: Fix call-chain
	support to use NMI-safe methods

* Ingo Molnar (mingo@...e.hu) wrote:
> 
> * Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org> wrote:
> 
> > > If it's faster, this becomes a legit (albeit complex) 
> > > micro-optimization in a _very_ hot codepath.
> > 
> > I don't think it's all that hot. It's not like it's the return to 
> > user mode.
> 
> Well i guess it depends. For server apps it is true - syscalls are a 
> lot more dominant, MMs are long-running so any startup cost gets 
> amortized and pagefaults are avoided.
> 
> For something like a kernel build we have 7 times as many pagefaults 
> as syscalls:
> 
> aldebaran:~/linux/linux> perf stat -- make -j32 >/dev/null
> [...]
>  Performance counter stats for 'make -j32':
> 
>  1444281.076741  task-clock-msecs     #     14.429 CPUs 
>          219991  context-switches     #      0.000 M/sec
>           18335  CPU-migrations       #      0.000 M/sec
>        38465628  page-faults          #      0.027 M/sec
>   4374762924204  cycles               #   3029.025 M/sec
>   2645979309823  instructions         #      0.605 IPC  
>     42398991227  cache-references     #     29.356 M/sec
>      4371920878  cache-misses         #      3.027 M/sec
> 
>   100.097787566  seconds time elapsed.
> 
> So we have 38465628 page-faults, or one every 68788 instructions, 
> one every 113731 cycles.
> 
> 10 cycles saved in the page fault costs means 0.01% performance win 
> - or about 10 milliseconds shaven off the kernel build time.
>  
> 100 cycles saved (which is impossible really in the entry/exit path) 
> would mean 0.1% win.
> 
> 5653639 syscalls (according to strace -c) - which is a factor of 6.8 
> lower. Same goes for shell scripts or most of the clicking we do on 
> a GUI.
> 
> It's not a big factor for sure.
> 
> Btw., the biggest pagefault cost is in the fault handling itself 
> (the page clearing):
> 
>       4.14%  [k] do_page_fault
>       1.20%  [k] sys_write
>       1.10%  [k] sys_open
>       0.63%  [k] sys_exit_group
>       0.48%  [k] smp_apic_timer_interrupt
>       0.37%  [k] sys_read
>       0.37%  [k] sys_execve
>       0.20%  [k] sys_mmap
>       0.18%  [k] sys_close
>       0.14%  [k] sys_munmap
>       0.13%  [k] sys_poll
>       0.09%  [k] sys_newstat
>       0.07%  [k] sys_clone
>       0.06%  [k] sys_newfstat
> 
> it totals to 4.14% of the total cost (user-space cycles included) of 
> a kernel build, on a Nehalem box.
> 
> 	Ingo


In the category "crazy ideas one should never express out loud", I could add the
following. We could choose to save/restore the cr2 register on the local stack
at every interrupt entry/exit, and therefore allow the page fault handler to
execute with interrupts enabled.

I have not benchmarked the interrupt disabling overhead of the page fault
handler handled by starting an interrupt-gated handler rather than trap-gated 
handler, but cli/sti instructions are known to take quite a few cycles on some
architectures. e.g. 131 cycles for the pair on P4, 23 cycles on AMD Athlon X2
64, 43 cycles on Intel Core2.

I am tempted to think that taking, say, ~10 cycles on the interrupt path worths
it if we save a few tens of cycles on the page fault handler fast path.

But again, this calls for benchmarks.

Mathieu



-- 
Mathieu Desnoyers
OpenPGP key fingerprint: 8CD5 52C3 8E3C 4140 715F  BA06 3F25 A8FE 3BAE 9A68
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