Re: [PATCH v2] arm64: optimize __memcpy_fromio and __memcpy_toio

From: Will Deacon
Date: Tue Oct 24 2017 - 07:09:12 EST


On Mon, Oct 23, 2017 at 09:25:35AM -0700, Mark Salyzyn wrote:
> __memcpy_fromio and __memcpy_toio functions do not deal well with
> harmonically unaligned addresses unless they can ultimately be
> copied as quads (u64) to and from the destination. Without a
> harmonically aligned relationship, they perform byte operations
> over the entire buffer.
>
> Dropped the fragment that tried to align on the normal memory,
> placing a priority on using quad alignment on the io-side.
>
> Removed the volatile on the source for __memcpy_toio as it is
> unnecessary.
>
> This change was motivated by performance issues in the pstore driver.
> On a test platform, measuring probe time for pstore, console buffer
> size of 1/4MB and pmsg of 1/2MB, was in the 90-107ms region. Change
> managed to reduce it to 10-25ms, an improvement in boot time.
>
> Signed-off-by: Mark Salyzyn <salyzyn@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Kees Cook <keescook@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Anton Vorontsov <anton@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Tony Luck <tony.luck@xxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@xxxxxxx>
> Cc: Will Deacon <will.deacon@xxxxxxx>
> Cc: Anton Vorontsov <anton@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: linux-arm-kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Cc: linux-kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> v2:
> - simplify, do not try so hard, or through steps, to align on the
> normal memory side, as it was a diminishing return. Dealing with
> any pathological short cases was unnecessary since there does not
> appear to be any.
> - drop similar __memset_io changes completely.

I'm fine with the idea here, but can you leave the '8's alone and not
replace them with sizeof(u64) please? I don't think it helps anybody,
and we still use ++/-- for the u8 case.

Will