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

From: Christoph Lameter
Date: Thu Jul 10 2008 - 10:15:27 EST


With the zero based approach you do not have a relative address anymore. We are basically creating a new absolute address space where we place variables starting at zero.

This means that we are fully independent from the placement of the percpu segment.

The loader may place the per cpu segment with the initialized variables anywhere. We just need to set GS correctly for the boot cpu. We always need to refer to the per cpu variables
via GS or by adding the per cpu offset to the __per_cpu_offset[] (which is now badly named because it points directly to the start of the percpu segment for each processor).

So there is no 2G limitation on the distance between the code and the percpu segment anymore. The 2G limitation still exists for the *size* of the per cpu segment. If we go beyond 2G in defined per cpu variables then the per cpu addresses will wrap.
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