[tip:x86/olpc] x86, olpc: Speed up device tree creation during boot

From: tip-bot for Andres Salomon
Date: Wed Dec 15 2010 - 21:59:02 EST


Commit-ID: b5318d302f8a20eacbbfc01b0ee35b108085a363
Gitweb: http://git.kernel.org/tip/b5318d302f8a20eacbbfc01b0ee35b108085a363
Author: Andres Salomon <dilinger@xxxxxxxxxx>
AuthorDate: Mon, 29 Nov 2010 23:39:51 +0000
Committer: H. Peter Anvin <hpa@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
CommitDate: Wed, 15 Dec 2010 17:11:40 -0800

x86, olpc: Speed up device tree creation during boot

Calling alloc_bootmem() for tiny chunks of memory over and over is really
slow; on an XO-1, it caused the time between when the kernel started
booting and when the display came alive (post-lxfb probe) to increase
to 44s. This patch optimizes the prom_early_alloc function by
calling alloc_bootmem for 4k-sized blocks of memory, and handing out
chunks of that to callers. With this patch, the time between kernel load
and display initialization decreased to 23s. If there's a better way to
do this early in the boot process, please let me know.

(Note: increasing the chunk size to 16k didn't noticably affect boot time,
and wasted 9k.)

v4: clarify comment, requested by hpa
v3: fix wasted memory buglet found by Milton Miller, and style fix.
v2: reorder prom_early_alloc as suggested by Grant.

Signed-off-by: Andres Salomon <dilinger@xxxxxxxxxx>
LKML-Reference: <20101129153951.74202a84@xxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: H. Peter Anvin <hpa@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
---
arch/x86/platform/olpc/olpc_dt.c | 28 +++++++++++++++++++++++-----
1 files changed, 23 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)

diff --git a/arch/x86/platform/olpc/olpc_dt.c b/arch/x86/platform/olpc/olpc_dt.c
index 7054697..dab8746 100644
--- a/arch/x86/platform/olpc/olpc_dt.c
+++ b/arch/x86/platform/olpc/olpc_dt.c
@@ -126,14 +126,32 @@ static unsigned int prom_early_allocated __initdata;

void * __init prom_early_alloc(unsigned long size)
{
+ static u8 *mem;
+ static size_t free_mem;
void *res;

- res = alloc_bootmem(size);
- if (res)
- memset(res, 0, size);
-
- prom_early_allocated += size;
+ if (free_mem < size) {
+ const size_t chunk_size = max(PAGE_SIZE, size);
+
+ /*
+ * To mimimize the number of allocations, grab at least
+ * PAGE_SIZE of memory (that's an arbitrary choice that's
+ * fast enough on the platforms we care about while minimizing
+ * wasted bootmem) and hand off chunks of it to callers.
+ */
+ res = alloc_bootmem(chunk_size);
+ if (!res)
+ return NULL;
+ prom_early_allocated += chunk_size;
+ memset(res, 0, chunk_size);
+ free_mem = chunk_size;
+ mem = res;
+ }

+ /* allocate from the local cache */
+ free_mem -= size;
+ res = mem;
+ mem += size;
return res;
}

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