Re: [RFC 00/15] x86_64: Optimize percpu accesses

From: Jeremy Fitzhardinge
Date: Wed Jul 09 2008 - 14:26:35 EST


Christoph Lameter wrote:
That is going to be difficult. The GS register is tied up for the pda area
as long as you have it. And you cannot get rid of the pda because of the library
compatibility issues. We would break binary compatibility if we would get rid of the pda.

If one attempts to remove one field after another then the converted accesses will not be able to use GS relative accesses anymore. This can lead to all sorts of complications.

Eh? Yes they will. That's the whole point of making the pda a percpu variable itself. You can use %gs:<small> to get to the pda, and %gs:<larger> to get to percpu variables. Converting pda->percpu will just have the effect of increasing the %gs offset into the percpu space.

This project isn't interesting to me unless per-cpu variables are directly accessible off %gs.

J
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