Re: aim7 -30% regression in 2.6.24-rc1

From: Zhang, Yanmin
Date: Mon Oct 29 2007 - 05:38:28 EST


On Mon, 2007-10-29 at 10:22 +0800, Zhang, Yanmin wrote:
> On Fri, 2007-10-26 at 13:23 +0200, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> > * Zhang, Yanmin <yanmin_zhang@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > > I tested 2.6.24-rc1 on my x86_64 machine which has 2 quad-core processors.
> > >
> > > Comparing with 2.6.23, aim7 has about -30% regression. I did a bisect
> > > and found patch
> > > http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commitdiff;h=b5869ce7f68b233ceb81465a7644be0d9a5f3dbb
> > > caused the issue.
> >
> > weird, that's a commit diff - i.e. it changes no code.
> I got the tag from #git log. As for above link, I just added prior http address,
> so readers could check the patch by clicking.
>
> >
> > > kbuild/SPECjbb2000/SPECjbb2005 also has big regressions. On my another
> > > tigerton machine (4 quad-core processors), SPECjbb2005 has more than
> > > -40% regression. I didn't do a bisect on such benchmark testing, but I
> > > suspect the root cause is like aim7's.
> >
> > these two commits might be relevant:
> >
> > 7a6c6bcee029a978f866511d6e41dbc7301fde4c
> I did a quick testing. This patch has no impact.
>
> > 95dbb421d12fdd9796ed153853daf3679809274f
> Above big patch doesn't include this one, which means if I do
> 'git checkout b5869ce7f68b233ceb81465a7644be0d9a5f3dbb', the kernel doesn't include
> 95dbb421d12fdd9796ed153853daf3679809274f.
>
> >
> > but a bisection result would be the best info.
> I will do a bisect between 2.6.23 and tag 9c63d9c021f375a2708ad79043d6f4dd1291a085.
I ran git bisect with kernel version as the tag. It looks like git will
be crazy sometimes. So I checked ChangeLog and used the number tag to replace
the kernel version and retested it.

It looks like at least 2 patches were responsible for the regression. I'm
doing sub-bisect now.

I could find aim7 regression on all my testing machines although the regression
percentage is different.

Machine regression
8-core stoakley 30%
16-core tigerton 6%
tulsa(dual-core+HT, 16 logical cpu) 20%

-yanmin
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