linux-kernel - Re: Disable L1/L2/L3 cache and MTRR

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Message-ID: <20101021202336.GA3318@sucs.org>
Date:	Thu, 21 Oct 2010 21:23:36 +0100
From:	Sitsofe Wheeler <sitsofe@...oo.com>
To:	Andev <debiandev@...il.com>
Cc:	linux kernel <kernelnewbies@...linux.org>,
	LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: Disable L1/L2/L3 cache and MTRR

Hi,

On Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 12:21:15PM -0400, Andev wrote:
> 
> In Intel software developers manual, it is mentioned that apart from the
> above you need to disable MTRR. I did that using the following command:
> 
> echo "disable=00" >| /proc/mtrr
> 
> Now when I run some sample benchmarks they show a slowdown of almost 1000x!!
> 
> This is not reasonable since the max. The slowdown I was expecting is 200x
> considering that it will take 200 cycles to read from DRAM.

Assuming the cache was completely disabled, won't the impact be
cumulative? E.g. imagine a memory read takes one cycle from cache and
100 from main memory. If you read 5 instructions from cache that will
take 5 cycles. If you read 5 instructions from main memory that will be
5*100 so 500 cycles. If it is 10 instructions then it is 10 vs 1000 and
so on...

Are you searching for an improvement in determinism?

-- 
Sitsofe | http://sucs.org/~sits/
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