Re: SMP spin-locks

From: Doug Ledford (dledford@redhat.com)
Date: Fri Jun 15 2001 - 01:51:06 EST


Kurt Garloff wrote:
>
> On Thu, Jun 14, 2001 at 01:26:05PM -0400, Richard B. Johnson wrote:
> > Question 2: What is the purpose of the code sequence, "repz nop"
>
> Puts iP4 into low power mode.

Umm, slightly more accurate would be to say that it makes the P4 processor
wait before resuming the loop to give the lock a chance to have been
released. It makes the code go from a constant busy loop to a check/wait
small amount of time/check again loop. This in turns keeps your processor
from trying to constantly check the lock itself which is suppossed to have
benefits in terms of inter-processor bus pressure.

-- 

Doug Ledford <dledford@redhat.com> http://people.redhat.com/dledford Please check my web site for aic7xxx updates/answers before e-mailing me about problems - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/



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