Re: [POC][RFC][PATCH 1/2] jump_function: Addition of new feature "jump_function"

[Andy Lutomirski]

> On Oct 6, 2018, at 6:39 AM, Steven Rostedt <rostedt@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> On Sat, 6 Oct 2018 14:12:11 +0200
> Peter Zijlstra <peterz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
>>> On Fri, Oct 05, 2018 at 09:51:11PM -0400, Steven Rostedt wrote:
>>> +#define arch_dynfunc_trampoline(name, def)    \
>>> +    asm volatile (                \
>>> +    ".globl dynfunc_" #name "; \n\t"    \
>>> +    "dynfunc_" #name ": \n\t"        \
>>> +    "jmp " #def " \n\t"            \
>>> +    ".balign 8 \n \t"            \
>>> +    : : : "memory" )  
>> 
>> Bah, what is it with you people and trampolines. Why can't we, just like
>> jump_label, patch the call directly?
>> 
>> The whole call+jmp thing is silly, don't do that. It just wrecks I$ and
>> is slower for no real reason afaict.
> 
> My first attempt was to do just that. But to add a label at the
> call site required handling all the parameters too. See my branch:
> ftrace/jump_function-v1 for how ugly it got (and it didn't work).
> 
>> 
>> Steve, also see:
>> 
>>  https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20181005081333.15018-1-ard.biesheuvel@xxxxxxxxxx
> 
> Interesting. I don't have time to look at it at the moment to see what
> was done, but will do so in the near future.
> 
> Remember, this was a proof of concept and even with the trampolines, it
> showed a great level of improvement. One thought was to do a
> "recordmcount.c" type of action to find where the calls were and patch
> them directly at boot up. I tried to keep the API the same where this
> could actually be done as an improvement later.
> 
> Perhaps a gcc plugin might work too.
> 

My suggestion was to have objtool do the dirty work. Josh said something suspiciously like âsounds funâ on IRC :)

> I'll have to see what Ard did to handle the function parameters.
> 
> -- Steve
>