linux-kernel - Re: [RFC/HACK] x86: Fast return to kernel

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Date:	Sun, 04 May 2014 15:01:44 -0700
From:	"H. Peter Anvin" <h.peter.anvin@...el.com>
To:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
CC:	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...nel.org>,
	Andy Lutomirski <luto@...capital.net>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	the arch/x86 maintainers <x86@...nel.org>,
	Steven Rostedt <rostedt@...dmis.org>,
	Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@...llo.nl>
Subject: Re: [RFC/HACK] x86: Fast return to kernel

On 05/04/2014 02:31 PM, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Sun, May 4, 2014 at 12:59 PM, H. Peter Anvin <h.peter.anvin@...el.com> wrote:
>>
>> Maybe let userspace sit in a tight loop doing RDTSC, and look for data
>> points too far apart to have been uninterrupted?
> 
> That won't work, since Andy's patch improves on the "interrupt
> happened in kernel space", not on the user-space interrupt case.
> 

I was thinking about your proposal, not Andy's.

> But some variation on that with a kernel module that does something like
> 
>  - take over one CPU and force tons of timer interrupts on that CPU
> using the local APIC
> 
>  - for (say) ten billion cycles, do something like this in that kernel module:
> 
>    #define TEN_BILLION (10000000000)
> 
>         unsigned long prev = 0, sum = 0, end = rdtsc() + TEN_BILLION;
>         for (;;) {
>                 unsigned long tsc = rdtsc();
>                 if (tsc > end)
>                         break;
>                 if (tsc < prev + 500) {
>                         sum += tsc - prev;
>                 }
>                 prev = tsc;
>         }
> 
> and see how big a fraction of the 10 billion cycles you capture in
> 'sum'.  The bigger the fraction, the less time the timer interrupts
> stole from your CPU.
> 
> That "500" is just a random cut-off. Any interrupt will take more than
> that many TSC cycles. So the above basically counts how much
> uninterrupted time that thread gets.

Yes, same idea, but in a kernel module.

	-hpa


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