linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] arch/x86: Add an option to build the kernel with '-march=native' on x86-64

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Message-ID: <9f0da222-f75b-46a2-97d6-24f6e2da7abd@mailbox.org>
Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2025 13:08:47 +0100
From: Tor Vic <torvic9@...lbox.org>
To: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...nel.org>, x86@...nel.org,
 linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Cc: Borislav Petkov <bp@...en8.de>, Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
 Ingo Molnar <mingo@...hat.com>, "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] arch/x86: Add an option to build the kernel with
 '-march=native' on x86-64

On 3/22/25 12:40, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 21, 2025, at 15:28, Tor Vic wrote:
>> Add a 'native' option that allows users to build an optimized kernel for
>> their local machine (i.e. the machine which is used to build the kernel)
>> by passing '-march=native' to the CFLAGS.
>>
>> The idea comes from Linus' reply to Arnd's initial proposal in [1].
>>
>> This patch is based on Arnd's x86 cleanup series, which is now in -tip [2].
> 
> Thanks for having another look at this and for including the
> benchmarks. I ended up dropping this bit of my series because
> there were too many open questions around things like
> reproducible builds, but there is clearly a demand for having
> this included.
> 
>>        hackbench (lower is better):
>>        102.27 --> 99.50                         (-2.709 %)
>>
>>    - stress-ng, bogoops, average of 3 15-second runs:
>>        fork:
>>        111'744 --> 115'509                      (+3.397 %)
>>        bsearch:
>>        7'211 --> 7'436                          (+3.120 %)
>>        vm:
>>        1'442'256 --> 1'486'615                  (+3.076 %)
> 
> 3% in userspace benchmarks does seem significant enough to
> spend more time on seeing what exactly made the difference
> here, and possibly including it as separate options.

I didn't have a lot of time, so I only started 3 runs, and that is 
probably not enough to get accurate results as some tests are quite 
fluctuating.
I'm also not sure if those stress-ng tests are appropriate for this kind 
of testing, but I decided to include the results.

Suggestions for other benchmarks are welcome!

> 
>> +ifdef CONFIG_NATIVE_CPU
>> +        KBUILD_CFLAGS += -march=native
>> +        KBUILD_RUSTFLAGS += -Ctarget-cpu=native
>> +else
>>           KBUILD_CFLAGS += -march=x86-64 -mtune=generic
>>           KBUILD_RUSTFLAGS += -Ctarget-cpu=x86-64 -Ztune-cpu=generic
>> +endif
> 
> I assume that the difference here is that -march=native on
> your machine gets turned into -march=skylake, which then turns
> on both additional instructions and a different instruction
> scheduler.

IIRC, '-march=native' on Skylake turns into '-march=skylake -mabm' with gcc.

> 
> Are you able to quickly run the same tests again using
> just one of the two?
> 
> a) -march=x86-64 -mtune=skylake
> b) -march=skylake -mtune=generic
> 

Unfortunately that poor old laptop is quite slow, but I intend to run 
more tests on my much faster Zen2 machine next week.
I'll report back.

>      Arnd