[x86_64] Strange oprofile results on access to per_cpu data

[Eric Dumazet]

Hi Andi

While doing some oprofile analysis, I got this result on ip_route_input() : 
one particular instruction seems to spend a lot of cycles.

machine is a dual core 285, 2.6 GHz

/*
 * Command line: opannotate -a event:CPU_CLK_UNHALTED 
/usr/src/linux-2.6.18/vmlinux
 *
 * Interpretation of command line:
 * Output annotated assembly listing with samples
 *
 * CPU: AMD64 processors, speed 2600.01 MHz (estimated)
 * Counted CPU_CLK_UNHALTED events (Cycles outside of halt state) with a unit 
mask of 0x00 (No unit mask) count 10000
 */

ffffffff803e9860 <ip_route_input>: /* ip_route_input total: 543098  2.5487 */

/* relevant extract from ip_route_input() */
   600  0.0028 :ffffffff803e98b3:       mov    $0xffffffff806375e0,%rsi
   883  0.0041 :ffffffff803e98ba:       mov    %rax,%rdx
     6 2.8e-05 :ffffffff803e98bd:       mov    %rsi,%rcx
  2281  0.0107 :ffffffff803e98c0:       cmp    0xf0(%rdx),%r12d
  9767  0.0458 :ffffffff803e98c7:       jne    ffffffff803e98f1 
<ip_route_input+0x91>
   108 5.1e-04 :ffffffff803e98c9:       cmp    0xf4(%rdx),%r14d
 41459  0.1946 :ffffffff803e98d0:       jne    ffffffff803e98f1 
<ip_route_input+0x91>
   549  0.0026 :ffffffff803e98d2:       cmp    0xec(%rdx),%ebx
 88604  0.4158 :ffffffff803e98d8:       jne    ffffffff803e98f1 
<ip_route_input+0x91>
   478  0.0022 :ffffffff803e98da:       mov    0xe8(%rdx),%eax
   315  0.0015 :ffffffff803e98e0:       test   %eax,%eax
   241  0.0011 :ffffffff803e98e2:       jne    ffffffff803e98f1 
<ip_route_input+0x91>
   248  0.0012 :ffffffff803e98e4:       cmp    0xfc(%rdx),%r13b

  2314  0.0109 :ffffffff803e98eb:       je     ffffffff803ea3b3
################ BEGIN
   370  0.0017 :ffffffff803e98f1:       mov    %gs:0x8,%rax
222769  1.0454 :ffffffff803e98fa:       incl   0x38(%rcx,%rax,1)
################ END
     6 2.8e-05 :ffffffff803e98fe:       mov    (%rdx),%rdx
   833  0.0039 :ffffffff803e9901:       test   %rdx,%rdx

__raw_get_cpu_var(rt_cache_stat).field++ appears to be very expensive

(about 18000 RT_CACHE_STAT_INC(in_hlist_search); are done per second, not an 
impressive count in fact)

Are segment prefixes that expensive ?
Or is it only the first access to %gs:8 that is doing extra checks ?
(because other RT_CACHE_STAT_INC() done in the same function dont have this cost)
Or is it the loading of %rcx (done in ffffffff803e98bd) that is stalling ?

I was wondering if avoiding a dependancy would help :

As we dont have TLS support in kernel yet, I was considering trying (just for 
experimentation) to stick a struct rt_cache_stat in pda, since it avoids one step.

#if defined(RT_CACHE_STAT_IN_PDA)
# define RT_CACHE_STAT_INC(field) add_pda(rt_cache_stat.field, 1)
# define addr_of_rt_cache_stat(cpu) &cpu_pda(cpu)->rt_cache_stat
#else
  static DEFINE_PER_CPU(struct rt_cache_stat, rt_cache_stat);
# define RT_CACHE_STAT_INC(field) (__raw_get_cpu_var(rt_cache_stat).field++)
# define addr_of_rt_cache_stat(cpu) &per_cpu(rt_cache_stat, cpu)
#endif

so that RT_CACHE_STAT_INC(field) would map to

   addl $1,%gs:OFFSET  /* no register needed */

Thank you
Eric
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