linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] drm: omapdrm: reduce clang stack usage

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Message-ID: <c93bf50b-0300-4bd9-8c59-bc2b876801f8@ideasonboard.com>
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2025 17:37:17 +0300
From: Tomi Valkeinen <tomi.valkeinen@...asonboard.com>
To: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>, Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...nel.org>
Cc: Nick Desaulniers <nick.desaulniers+lkml@...il.com>,
 Bill Wendling <morbo@...gle.com>, Justin Stitt <justinstitt@...gle.com>,
 linux <linux@...blig.org>, dri-devel@...ts.freedesktop.org,
 linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, llvm@...ts.linux.dev,
 Maarten Lankhorst <maarten.lankhorst@...ux.intel.com>,
 Maxime Ripard <mripard@...nel.org>, Thomas Zimmermann <tzimmermann@...e.de>,
 Dave Airlie <airlied@...il.com>, Simona Vetter <simona@...ll.ch>,
 Nathan Chancellor <nathan@...nel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] drm: omapdrm: reduce clang stack usage

Hi,

On 12/06/2025 15:40, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 12, 2025, at 09:58, Tomi Valkeinen wrote:
>> On 10/06/2025 12:27, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
>>>  
>>> -static void dispc_restore_context(struct dispc_device *dispc)
>>> +static noinline_for_stack void dispc_restore_context(struct dispc_device *dispc)
>>>  {
>>>  	int i, j;
>>>  
>>
>> While I don't think this causes any harm, but... What's going on here?
>> If I compile with gcc (x86 or arm), I see stack usage in few hundreds of
>> bytes. If I compile with LLVM=1, the stack usage jumps to over a thousand.
>>
>> Is clang just broken? I don't see anything special with
>> dispc_restore_context() or dispc_runtime_resume(), so is this same thing
>> happening all around the kernel, and we need to sprinkle noinlines
>> everywhere?
>>
>> Or do we get some extra debugging feature enabled only on clang with
>> allmodconfig, and that is eating the stack?
> 
> There is no general answer here, but a combination of multiple
> effects going on at the same time throughout the kernel, which lead
> to clang observing excessive stack usage in some files when gcc
> does not:
> 
> - both compilers have a number of corner cases where they run off
>   and do something crazy for unusual input (usually crypto code),
>   but since gcc has more users, most files that trigger only gcc
>   already have workarounds in place, while the ones that trigger
>   with clang are still missing them
> 
> - The inlining algorithm works the opposite way on clang vs gcc,
>   while gcc always starts inlining leaf functions into their callers
>   and does this recursively, clang starts with global functions
>   and inlines its direct callees first. If you have deeply nested
>   static functions that could all be inlined, both stop at some
>   point, but the resulting object code looks completely different,
>   and the stack usage is a symptom of this. I've added 'noinline'
>   for some of the cases like this where I know both result in
>   the same (harmless) stack usage through the call chain, but
>   only clang warns about it.
> 
> - clang has previously had bugs where it tracks the lifetime of
>   stack variables incorrectly, so multiple variables that
>   should share the same stack slot won't. Some of these are
>   fixed now, others are a result of the different inlining, and
>   some others are likely still bugs we should fix in clang
> 
> - CONFIG_KMSAN disables some optimizations that are required
>   for reducing stack usage, and at the moment this is only
>   implemented in clang but not gcc.
> 
> - CONFIG_KASAN has some similar issues as KMSAN but is not
>   quite as bad here.
> 
> - CONFIG_KASAN_STACK tends to use more stack with clang than gcc
>   because of implementation choices around how hard it should
>   try to detect array overflows. This could be changed by having
>   clang make similar decisions to gcc here, but for now we just
>   require using CONFIG_EXPERT=y to enable KASAN_STACK on clang.
> 
> I have managed to produce a testcase for this file that shows
> how clang produces huge stack usage when gcc does not,
> in this case it seems to be triggered by -fsanitize=kernel-address
> 
> https://godbolt.org/z/TT88zPYf6

Interesting! And clang does fine if I change the DISPC_OVL_BASE() to

static u16 DISPC_OVL_BASE(enum omap_plane_id plane)
{
    static const u16 bases[] = {0x0080, 0x00BC, 0x014C, 0x0300, 0x0500};
    return bases[plane];
}

In any case, I'll apply this with a small comment.

 Tomi