Re: [PATCH 0/5] ftrace: to kill a daemon

[Steven Rostedt]

On Fri, 8 Aug 2008, Mathieu Desnoyers wrote:
> * Steven Rostedt (rostedt@xxxxxxxxxxx) wrote:
> > 
> > On Fri, 8 Aug 2008, Mathieu Desnoyers wrote:
> > > * Steven Rostedt (rostedt@xxxxxxxxxxx) wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > I originally used jumps instead of nops, but unfortunately, they actually 
> > > > hurt performance more than adding nops. Ingo told me it was probably due
> > > > to using up the jump predictions of the CPU.
> > > > 
> > > 
> > > Hrm, are you sure you use a single 5-bytes nop instruction then, or do
> > > you use a mix of various nop sizes (add_nops) on some architectures ?
> > 
> > I use (for x86) what is in include/asm-x86/nops.h depending on what the
> > cpuid gives us.
> > 
> 
> That's bad :
> 
> #define GENERIC_NOP5 GENERIC_NOP1 GENERIC_NOP4
> 
> #define K8_NOP5 K8_NOP3 K8_NOP2
> 
> #define K7_NOP5 K7_NOP4 ASM_NOP1
> 
> So, when you try, later, to replace these instructions with a single
> 5-bytes instruction, a preempted thread could iret in the middle of your
> 5-bytes insn and cause an illegal instruction ?

That's why I use kstop_machine.

> 
> 
> > > 
> > > You can consume the branch prediction buffers for conditional branches,
> > > but I doubt static jumps have this impact ? I don't see what "jump
> > > predictions" you are referring to here exactly.
> > 
> > I don't know the details, but we definitely saw a drop in preformance 
> > between using nops and static jumps.
> > 
> 
> Generated by replacing all the call by 5-bytes jumps e9 00 00 00 00
> instead of the 5-bytes add_nops ? On which architectures ?
> 

I ran this on my Dell (intel Xeon), which IIRC did show the performance 
degration. I unfortunately don't have the time to redo those tests, but 
you are welcome to.

Just look at arch/x86/kernel/ftrace.c and replace the nop with the jump.
In fact, the comments in that file still say it is a jmp. Remember, my 
first go was to use the jmp.

-- Steve

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