Re: [PATCH v1] clk: Convert managed get functions to devm_add_action API

[Marc Gonzalez]

On 12/12/2019 15:47, Robin Murphy wrote:

> On 12/12/2019 1:53 pm, Marc Gonzalez wrote:
>
>> On 11/12/2019 23:28, Dmitry Torokhov wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, Dec 11, 2019 at 05:17:28PM +0100, Marc Gonzalez wrote:
>>>
>>>> What is the rationale for the devm_add_action API?
>>>
>>> For one-off and maybe complex unwind actions in drivers that wish to use
>>> devm API (as mixing devm and manual release is verboten). Also is often
>>> used when some core subsystem does not provide enough devm APIs.
>>
>> Thanks for the insight, Dmitry. Thanks to Robin too.
>>
>> This is what I understand so far:
>>
>> devm_add_action() is nice because it hides/factorizes the complexity
>> of the devres API, but it incurs a small storage overhead of one
>> pointer per call, which makes it unfit for frequently used actions,
>> such as clk_get.
>>
>> Is that correct?
>>
>> My question is: why not design the API without the small overhead?
> 
> Probably because on most architectures, ARCH_KMALLOC_MINALIGN is at 
> least as big as two pointers anyway, so this "overhead" should mostly be 
> free in practice. Plus the devres API is almost entirely about being 
> able to write simple robust code, rather than absolute efficiency - I 
> mean, struct devres itself is already 5 pointers large at the absolute 
> minimum ;)

(3 pointers: 1 list_head + 1 function pointer)

I'm confused. The first patch was criticized for potentially adding
an extra pointer for every devm_clk_get (e.g. 800 bytes on a 64-bit
platform with 100 clocks).

Let's see. On arm64, ARCH_KMALLOC_MINALIGN is 128.

So basically, a struct devres looks like this on arm64:

	list_head.next
	list_head.prev
	dr_release_t
		.
		.
		.
	104 bytes of padding
		.
		.
		.
	data (flexible array)
		.
		.
		.
	padding up to 256 bytes


Basically, on arm64, every struct devres occupies 256 bytes, most of it
(typically 104 + 112 = 216) wasted as padding.

Hmmm, given how many devm stuff goes on in a modern platform, there
might be large savings to be had...

Assuming 10,000 calls to devres_alloc_node(), we would be wasting ~2 MB
of RAM. Not sure it's worth trying to save that?

$ git grep '#define ARCH_DMA_MINALIGN'
arch/arc/include/asm/cache.h:#define ARCH_DMA_MINALIGN  SMP_CACHE_BYTES
arch/arm/include/asm/cache.h:#define ARCH_DMA_MINALIGN  L1_CACHE_BYTES
arch/arm64/include/asm/cache.h:#define ARCH_DMA_MINALIGN        (128)
arch/c6x/include/asm/cache.h:#define ARCH_DMA_MINALIGN  L1_CACHE_BYTES
arch/csky/include/asm/cache.h:#define ARCH_DMA_MINALIGN L1_CACHE_BYTES
arch/hexagon/include/asm/cache.h:#define ARCH_DMA_MINALIGN      L1_CACHE_BYTES
arch/m68k/include/asm/cache.h:#define ARCH_DMA_MINALIGN L1_CACHE_BYTES
arch/microblaze/include/asm/page.h:#define ARCH_DMA_MINALIGN    L1_CACHE_BYTES
arch/mips/include/asm/mach-generic/kmalloc.h:#define ARCH_DMA_MINALIGN  128
arch/mips/include/asm/mach-ip32/kmalloc.h:#define ARCH_DMA_MINALIGN     32
arch/mips/include/asm/mach-ip32/kmalloc.h:#define ARCH_DMA_MINALIGN     128
arch/mips/include/asm/mach-tx49xx/kmalloc.h:#define ARCH_DMA_MINALIGN L1_CACHE_BYTES
arch/nds32/include/asm/cache.h:#define ARCH_DMA_MINALIGN   L1_CACHE_BYTES
arch/nios2/include/asm/cache.h:#define ARCH_DMA_MINALIGN        L1_CACHE_BYTES
arch/parisc/include/asm/cache.h:#define ARCH_DMA_MINALIGN       L1_CACHE_BYTES
arch/powerpc/include/asm/page_32.h:#define ARCH_DMA_MINALIGN    L1_CACHE_BYTES
arch/sh/include/asm/page.h:#define ARCH_DMA_MINALIGN    L1_CACHE_BYTES
arch/unicore32/include/asm/cache.h:#define ARCH_DMA_MINALIGN    L1_CACHE_BYTES
arch/xtensa/include/asm/cache.h:#define ARCH_DMA_MINALIGN       L1_CACHE_BYTES

Hmmm, how does arch/x86 do it?

Regards.