linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 0/3] entry: inline syscall enter/exit functions

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Date:   Wed, 6 Dec 2023 12:02:02 +0100
From:   Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>
To:     Sven Schnelle <svens@...ux.ibm.com>
Cc:     Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
        Andy Lutomirski <luto@...nel.org>,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, Heiko Carstens <hca@...ux.ibm.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/3] entry: inline syscall enter/exit functions

On Tue, Dec 05, 2023 at 02:30:12PM +0100, Sven Schnelle wrote:
> Hi List,
> 
> looking into the performance of syscall entry/exit after s390 switched
> to generic entry showed that there's quite some overhead calling some
> of the entry/exit work functions even when there's nothing to do.
> This patchset moves the entry and exit function to entry-common.h, so
> non inlined code gets only called when there is some work pending.

So per that logic you wouldn't need to inline exit_to_user_mode_loop()
for example, that's only called when there is a EXIT_TO_USER_MODE_WORK
bit set.

That is, I'm just being pedantic here and pointing out that your
justification doesn't cover the extent of the changes.

> I wrote a small program that just issues invalid syscalls in a loop.
> On an s390 machine, this results in the following numbers:
> 
> without this series:
> 
> # ./syscall 1000000000
> runtime: 94.886581s / per-syscall 9.488658e-08s
> 
> with this series:
> 
> ./syscall 1000000000
> runtime: 84.732391s / per-syscall 8.473239e-08s
> 
> so the time required for one syscall dropped from 94.8ns to
> 84.7ns, which is a drop of about 11%.

That is obviously very nice, and I don't immediately see anything wrong
with moving the lot to header based inlines.

Thomas?