Re: [PATCH v2] block: optimise bvec_iter_advance()

From: Arvind Sankar
Date: Sat Nov 30 2019 - 17:05:14 EST


On Sat, Nov 30, 2019 at 11:23:52PM +0300, Pavel Begunkov wrote:
> bvec_iter_advance() is quite popular, but compilers fail to do proper
> alias analysis and optimise it good enough. The assembly is checked
> for gcc 9.2, x86-64.
>
> - remove @iter->bi_size from min(...), as it's always less than @bytes.
> Modify at the beginning and forget about it.
>
> - the compiler isn't able to collapse memory dependencies and remove
> writes in the loop. Help it by explicitely using local vars.
>
> Signed-off-by: Pavel Begunkov <asml.silence@xxxxxxxxx>
> ---
>
> v2: simplify code (Arvind Sankar)
>

Thanks :)

Signed-off-by: Arvind Sankar <nivedita@xxxxxxxxxxxx>

Btw, I discovered that gcc 9.2 doesn't optimize away the second
comparison in something like

m = min(a,b);
return m>a;

So the WARN_ONCE bit doesn't get optimized away even in cases like
bio_for_each_bvec where it's guaranteed at compile-time to not trigger.