Re: [RFC PATCH 3/3] sched/fair: Use different cachelines for readers and writers of load_avg

From: Waiman Long
Date: Wed Dec 02 2015 - 13:44:57 EST


On 12/01/2015 03:47 AM, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
On Mon, Nov 30, 2015 at 11:00:35PM -0500, Waiman Long wrote:

I think the current kernel use power-of-2 kmemcaches to satisfy kalloc()
requests except when the size is less than or equal to 192 where there are
some non-power-of-2 kmemcaches available. Given that the task_group
structure is large enough with FAIR_GROUP_SCHED enabled, we shouldn't hit
the case that the allocated buffer is not cacheline aligned.
Using out-of-object storage is allowed (none of the existing sl*b
allocators do so iirc).

That is, its perfectly valid for a sl*b allocator for 64 byte objects to
allocate 72 bytes for each object and use the 'spare' 8 bytes for object
tracking or whatnot.

That would respect the minimum alignment guarantee of 8 bytes but not
provide the 'expected' object size alignment you're assuming.

Also, we have the proper interfaces to request the explicit alignment
for a reason. So if you need the alignment for correctness, use those.

Thanks for the tip. I have just sent out an updated patch set which create a cache-aligned memcache for task group. That should work under all kernel config setting.

Cheers,
Longman
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