Re: [PATCH] lib/int_sqrt.c: Optimize square root function

[Anshul Garg]

On Tue, Feb 3, 2015 at 10:11 AM, Davidlohr Bueso <dave@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Mon, 2015-02-02 at 11:13 -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>> IOW, instead of
>>
>>   m = 1UL << (BITS_PER_LONG - 2);
>>
>> perhaps something like
>>
>>    m = 1UL << (BITS_PER_LONG/2- 2);
>>    if (m < x)
>>        m <<= BITS_PER_LONG/2;

On doing this change also extra instruction(shown below) will execute
if x is small(say 10000).

b = y + m;
y >>= 1;
if (x >= b) {

Although i understand your point that we can set value of m according
to range of x.
But in future also range of x can change if apart from memory some
other module starts
using this function more extensively.
So in worst case it will be almost same as current implementation.

So i think its better to scale m according to x by doing
while(m > x)
m>>=2;
rather than according to range of x.

Thanks
Anshul Garg


>>
>> (assuming gcc can change that code into a "cmov") might cut down the
>> "lots of empty loops" case in half for small values of 'x'.
>
> Makes a lot of sense.
>

>> There's probably some other better cheap initial guess value estimator.
>
> Just to get a feeling for the normal arg range in the non-driver parts
> that use this thing:
>
> fs/ceph/super.h:        congestion_kb = (16*int_sqrt(totalram_pages)) << (PAGE_SHIFT-10);
> fs/nfs/write.c: nfs_congestion_kb = (16*int_sqrt(totalram_pages)) << (PAGE_SHIFT-10);
> fs/nfsd/nfscache.c:     limit = (16 * int_sqrt(low_pages)) << (PAGE_SHIFT-10);
> kernel/rcu/tree_plugin.h:               ls = int_sqrt(nr_cpu_ids);
> mm/memcontrol.c:                inactive_ratio = int_sqrt(10 * gb);
> mm/page_alloc.c:                ratio = int_sqrt(10 * gb);
> mm/page_alloc.c:        new_min_free_kbytes = int_sqrt(lowmem_kbytes * 16);
>
> So mostly values that scale according to mem or cpu.
>
>
>
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