Re: [PATCH] mm/page_alloc: drop flag-conversion "optimisation"

[Zi Yan]

On 12 Jun 2026, at 10:15, Brendan Jackman wrote:

> This code uses flag equivalences to try to optimise conversion from
> GFP_ to ALLOC_ but there's no clear reason to believe it makes things
> faster. Even if it gets rid of conditional branches, it just trades them
> for a data dependency.
>
> CPUs are pretty good at conditional branches. But, in my GCC x86 build
> it doesn't look like there are any branches anyway, the compiler found
> some conditional instruction tricks. (Caveat: This was extracted &
> annotated by Gemini AI, I did not actually read the disasm myself)
>
> Old code:
>
>         ae50:    8b 04 24                 mov    (%rsp),%eax           # Load gfp_mask
>         ...
>         ae5d:    41 89 c4                 mov    %eax,%r12d
>         ae64:    41 81 e4 20 08 00 00     and    $0x820,%r12d          # Mask both flags at once
>         ...
>         ae6f:    44 89 e1                 mov    %r12d,%ecx
>         ae77:    83 c9 40                 or     $0x40,%ecx            # OR with ALLOC_CPUSET (0x40)
>         ae7a:    89 4c 24 60              mov    %ecx,0x60(%rsp)       # Store to alloc_flags
>
> New code:
>
>   For  __GFP_HIGH  ( 0x20 ):
>   It uses the Carry Flag (via  sbb ) to conditionally add  0x20  to the base  0x40  ( ALLOC_CPUSET ) flag:
>
>         ae63:    83 e0 20                 and    $0x20,%eax            # Test __GFP_HIGH
>         ...
>         ae6a:    83 f8 01                 cmp    $0x1,%eax             # Set carry flag if 0
>         ae6f:    45 19 e4                 sbb    %r12d,%r12d           # %r12d = (gfp & 0x20) ? 0 : -1
>         ae80:    41 83 e4 e0              and    $0xffffffe0,%r12d     # %r12d = (gfp & 0x20) ? 0 : -32
>         ae87:    41 83 c4 60              add    $0x60,%r12d           # %r12d = (gfp & 0x20) ? 0x60 : 0x40
>
>   For  __GFP_KSWAPD_RECLAIM  ( 0x800 ):
>   It uses a conditional move ( cmov ) later in the function to set the  ALLOC_KSWAPD  ( 0x800 ) bit:
>
>         ae72:    25 00 08 00 00           and    $0x800,%eax           # Test __GFP_KSWAPD_RECLAIM
>         ae77:    89 44 24 30              mov    %eax,0x30(%rsp)       # Store result
>         ...
>         af2c:    80 cf 08                 or     $0x8,%bh              # Set ALLOC_KSWAPD (0x800) in temp reg
>         af2f:    45 85 c9                 test   %r9d,%r9d             # Check if __GFP_KSWAPD_RECLAIM was set
>         af32:    0f 44 d8                 cmove  %eax,%ebx             # If not, revert to flags without it
>
> Testing with a modified version[0] of lib/free_pages_test.c (adding
> printks with timing)...
>
> [0] https://github.com/bjackman/aethelred/blob/2ccdc84ef087c2a631914f58e106e99e19bd3b98/page-alloc-test/page-alloc-test.c
>
> Old results from a Sapphire Rapids consumer CPU:
>
> [   67.157118] page_alloc_test: Testing with GFP_KERNEL
> [   67.157122] page_alloc_test: Starting 1,000,000 allocations...
> [   70.704446] page_alloc_test: Completed. Time: 3543002 us (Avg: 3543.00 ns per alloc+free loop)
> [   70.704456] page_alloc_test: Testing with GFP_KERNEL | __GFP_COMP
> [   70.704460] page_alloc_test: Starting 1,000,000 allocations...
> [   70.944672] page_alloc_test: Completed. Time: 239980 us (Avg: 239.98 ns per alloc+free loop)
> [   70.944675] page_alloc_test: Test completed
>
> New results:
>
> [   70.079015] page_alloc_test: Testing with GFP_KERNEL
> [   70.079020] page_alloc_test: Starting 1,000,000 allocations...
> [   73.669396] page_alloc_test: Completed. Time: 3586954 us (Avg: 3586.95 ns per alloc+free loop)
> [   73.669402] page_alloc_test: Testing with GFP_KERNEL | __GFP_COMP
> [   73.669405] page_alloc_test: Starting 1,000,000 allocations...
> [   73.905084] page_alloc_test: Completed. Time: 235496 us (Avg: 235.49 ns per alloc+free loop)
> [   73.905086] page_alloc_test: Test completed
>
> Seems like a wash.
>
> So, drop the flag value coupling here and let the compiler and CPU do
> their job. Superscalar CPUs are pretty neat after all.
>
> (Used AI for the disasm but the rest is all manual).
>
> Signed-off-by: Brendan Jackman <jackmanb@xxxxxxxxxx>
> ---
>  mm/page_alloc.c | 14 ++++----------
>  1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 10 deletions(-)
>
With your own fixup, it looks good to me.

Reviewed-by: Zi Yan <ziy@xxxxxxxxxx>

Best Regards,
Yan, Zi