[PATCH v2] riscv: vector: treat VS_INITIAL as discard

From: Andy Chiu

Date: Thu Apr 02 2026 - 00:46:50 EST


From: Andy Chiu <andy.chiu@xxxxxxxxxx>

The purpose of riscv_v_vstate_discard() is to invalidate v context at
entries of syscalls. So users happen to use v after a syscall without
re-configuring would see a failure. It was achieved by setting vector
registers and CSRs to -1 and marking the context busy. However, this
results in redundant saving of v-context if the process is scheduled out
in a syscall. Moreover, restoring the invalidated context from memory is
a costly operation. In fact, all can be prevented if we can delay
vstate_discard before returning back to the user space. To be more
specific, the kernel can mark v-context as INITIAL and set the restore
flag at syscall entries. This is the indication for the vstate_restore,
so it awares that the vstate has to be invalidated before returning back
to the user space.

After applying this patch, the context switch performance has improved
6.78% on vector enabled lmbench running on a FPGA with VLEN=512. The
result was obtained by averaging the output from the following command.

$ lat_ctx 2
Before the patch: 599.8357692
After the patch: 559.1748148

Signed-off-by: Andy Chiu <andy.chiu@xxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Andy Chiu <andybnac@xxxxxxxxx>
---
arch/riscv/include/asm/vector.h | 10 ++++++----
1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)

diff --git a/arch/riscv/include/asm/vector.h b/arch/riscv/include/asm/vector.h
index 00cb9c0982b1..90f77e511cad 100644
--- a/arch/riscv/include/asm/vector.h
+++ b/arch/riscv/include/asm/vector.h
@@ -298,8 +298,8 @@ static inline void __riscv_v_vstate_discard(void)
static inline void riscv_v_vstate_discard(struct pt_regs *regs)
{
if (riscv_v_vstate_query(regs)) {
- __riscv_v_vstate_discard();
- __riscv_v_vstate_dirty(regs);
+ set_tsk_thread_flag(current, TIF_RISCV_V_DEFER_RESTORE);
+ riscv_v_vstate_on(regs);
}
}

@@ -315,7 +315,9 @@ static inline void riscv_v_vstate_save(struct __riscv_v_ext_state *vstate,
static inline void riscv_v_vstate_restore(struct __riscv_v_ext_state *vstate,
struct pt_regs *regs)
{
- if (riscv_v_vstate_query(regs)) {
+ if (__riscv_v_vstate_check(regs->status, INITIAL)) {
+ __riscv_v_vstate_discard();
+ } else if (riscv_v_vstate_query(regs)) {
__riscv_v_vstate_restore(vstate, vstate->datap);
__riscv_v_vstate_clean(regs);
}
@@ -326,7 +328,7 @@ static inline void riscv_v_vstate_set_restore(struct task_struct *task,
{
if (riscv_v_vstate_query(regs)) {
set_tsk_thread_flag(task, TIF_RISCV_V_DEFER_RESTORE);
- riscv_v_vstate_on(regs);
+ __riscv_v_vstate_clean(regs);
}
}

--
2.53.0