Re: [PATCH 05/31] x86/mm: Reduce tlb flushes from ptep_set_access_flags()

From: Rik van Riel
Date: Fri Oct 26 2012 - 09:14:10 EST


On 10/26/2012 08:48 AM, Andi Kleen wrote:
Michel Lespinasse <walken@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:

On Thu, Oct 25, 2012 at 9:23 PM, Linus Torvalds
<torvalds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Thu, Oct 25, 2012 at 8:57 PM, Rik van Riel <riel@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

That may not even be needed. Apparently Intel chips
automatically flush an entry from the TLB when it
causes a page fault. I assume AMD chips do the same,
because flush_tlb_fix_spurious_fault evaluates to
nothing on x86.

Yes. It's not architected as far as I know, though. But I agree, it's
possible - even likely - we could avoid TLB flushing entirely on x86.

Actually, it is architected on x86. This was first described in the
intel appnote 317080 "TLBs, Paging-Structure Caches, and Their
Invalidation", last paragraph of section 5.1. Nowadays, the same
contents are buried somewhere in Volume 3 of the architecture manual
(in my copy: 4.10.4.1 Operations that Invalidate TLBs and
Paging-Structure Caches)

This unfortunately would only work for processes with no threads
because it only works on the current logical CPU.

That is fine.

Potentially triggering a spurious page fault on
another CPU is bound to be better than always
doing a synchronous remote TLB flush, waiting
for who knows how many CPUs to acknowledge the
IPI...

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