Re: [patch 15/14] x86/dumpstack/64: Speedup in_exception_stack()

From: Peter Zijlstra
Date: Wed Apr 03 2019 - 04:08:34 EST


On Tue, Apr 02, 2019 at 10:51:49AM -0500, Josh Poimboeuf wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 02, 2019 at 05:48:56PM +0200, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> > > With the above "(stk <= begin || stk >= end)" check, removing the loop
> > > becomes not all that important since exception stack dumps are quite
> > > rare and not performance sensitive. With all the macros this code
> > > becomes a little more obtuse, so I'm not sure whether removal of the
> > > loop is a net positive.
> >
> > What about perf? It's NMI context and probably starts from there. Peter?
>
> I believe perf unwinds starting from the regs from the context which was
> interrupted by the NMI.

Aah, indeed. So then we only see exception stacks when the NMI lands in
an exception, which is, as you say, quite rare.