Re: [PATCH 2/2] Markers Implementation for Preempt RCU BoostTracing

[Ingo Molnar]

* Frank Ch. Eigler <fche@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> > [...] this is a general policy matter. It is _so much easier_ to add 
> > markers if they _can_ have near-zero overhead (as in 1-2 
> > instructions). Otherwise we'll keep arguing about it, especially if 
> > any is added to performance-critical codepath. (where we are 
> > counting instructions)
> 
> The effect of the immediate-values patch, combined with gcc 
> CFLAGS+=-freorder-blocks, *is* to keep the overhead at 1-2 
> dcache-impact-free instructions.  The register saves, parameter 
> evaluation, the function call, can all be moved out of line.

well, -freorder-blocks seems to be default-enabled at -O2 on gcc 4.2, so 
we should already be getting that, right?

There's one thing that would make out-of-line tracepoints have a lot 
less objectionable to me: right now the 'out of line' area is put to the 
end of functions. That splinters the kernel image with inactive, rarely 
taken areas of code - blowing up its icache footprint considerably. For 
example sched.o has ~100 functions, with the average function size being 
200 bytes. At 64 bytes L1 cacheline size that's a 10-20% icache waste 
already.

It's true that keeping the off-site code within the function keeps total 
codesize slightly smaller, because the offsets (and hence the 
conditional jumps) are thus 8 bit - but that's below 1% and the 
cache-blow-up aspect is more severe in practice at 10-20%.

So it would be nice if we could collect all this offline code and stuff 
it away into another portion of the kernel image. (or, into another 
portion of the object file - which would still be good enough in 
practice)

	Ingo
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