Re: [PATCH] riscv: uaccess: Add a fast path for small aligned copies

[yunhui cui]

Hi Paul,

On Tue, Jun 23, 2026 at 4:36 PM Yunhui Cui <cuiyunhui@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> The scalar user copy routine currently enters the word-copy path only
> for copies of at least 9 * SZREG - 1 bytes. On RV64 this is 71 bytes,
> so common 32-byte and 64-byte aligned user/kernel copies fall back to
> byte-by-byte copying.
>
> Add a small-copy word path for copies below that threshold when both
> source and destination are SZREG-aligned. Unaligned and sub-word copies
> keep using the existing byte-copy path, and larger copies keep using the
> existing large-copy paths.
>
> This is a generic usercopy improvement. One common case is Linux AIO:
> io_getevents() copies 32-byte struct io_event objects to userspace, and
> io_submit() copies 64-byte struct iocb objects from userspace.
>
> fio libaio randrw three-run averages improved:
>
>   baseline:   read 560k IOPS, write 240k IOPS, sys 68.60%
>   this patch: read 593k IOPS, write 254k IOPS, sys 69.03%
>
> This is about +5.8% read IOPS and +5.5% write IOPS.
>
> lmbench bw_pipe with small messages was also improved:
>
>   bw_pipe -m <size> -M 16m -W 1 -N 5
>
>   size   baseline MB/s   this patch MB/s   change
>    32       62.52            74.54         +19.2%
>    64      122.57           155.31         +26.7%
>
> Signed-off-by: Yunhui Cui <cuiyunhui@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> ---
>  arch/riscv/lib/uaccess.S | 19 +++++++++++++++++--
>  1 file changed, 17 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/arch/riscv/lib/uaccess.S b/arch/riscv/lib/uaccess.S
> index 4efea1b3326c8..2d78007f10d01 100644
> --- a/arch/riscv/lib/uaccess.S
> +++ b/arch/riscv/lib/uaccess.S
> @@ -70,12 +70,27 @@ SYM_FUNC_START(fallback_scalar_usercopy_sum_enabled)
>         add     t0, a0, a2
>
>         /*
> -        * Use byte copy only if too small.
> -        * SZREG holds 4 for RV32 and 8 for RV64
> +        * For small copies below the large-copy threshold, use word-copy if
> +        * both src and dst are naturally aligned. Unaligned or sub-word copies
> +        * are left to the byte-copy tail.
>          */
>         li      a3, 9*SZREG-1 /* size must >= (word_copy stride + SZREG-1) */
> +       bgeu    a2, a3, .Llarge_copy_user
> +       li      a3, SZREG
>         bltu    a2, a3, .Lbyte_copy_tail
> +       or      a3, a0, a1
> +       andi    a3, a3, SZREG-1
> +       bnez    a3, .Lbyte_copy_tail
> +       andi    t1, t0, ~(SZREG-1)
> +5:
> +       fixup REG_L   a5, 0(a1), 10f
> +       addi    a1, a1, SZREG
> +       fixup REG_S   a5, 0(a0), 10f
> +       addi    a0, a0, SZREG
> +       bltu    a0, t1, 5b
> +       j       .Lbyte_copy_tail
>
> +.Llarge_copy_user:
>         /*
>          * Copy first bytes until dst is aligned to word boundary.
>          * a0 - start of dst
> --
> 2.39.5
>

Could you please help confirm whether this patch can be merged?

Thanks，
Yunhui