Re: [PATCH v2] tile: avoid using clocksource_cyc2ns with absolute cycle count

[John Stultz]

On Wed, Nov 16, 2016 at 12:16 PM, Chris Metcalf <cmetcalf@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 11/16/2016 2:59 PM, John Stultz wrote:
>>
>> In your earlier patch, you mentioned this was similar to 4cecf6d401a0
>> ("sched, x86: Avoid unnecessary overflow in
>> sched_clock"). It might be better to actually try to use similar logic
>> there, to make sure the performance impact is minimal.
>
>
> This was the first thing I looked at when I saw the mult_frac()
> implementation.  The modulus operations are indeed converted to
> bitmasks and the divides to shifts.  We do have to do two multiplies
> instead of one, but that's basically the worst of the cost.
>
> Change 4cecf6d401a0 results in essentially identical code for x86 as
> this proposed change does for tile.  In fact a follow-on change by
> Salman introduced mult_frac() and switched to using it, so it was
> identical at that point.
>
> PeterZ (cc'ed) then improved it to use __int128 math via
> mul_u64_u32_shr(), but that doesn't help tile; we only do one multiply
> instead of two, but the multiply is handled by an out-of-line call to
> __multi3, and the sched_clock() function ends up about 2.5x slower as
> a result.
>
> Thanks for thinking about this!

Heh. Thanks for the history lesson and apologies for my forgetfulness. :)

thanks
-john