Re: [PATCH] net/core: use xx_zalloc instead xx_alloc and memset

[Paolo Abeni]

On Wed, 2020-11-18 at 16:15 +0800, Tian Tao wrote:
> use kmem_cache_zalloc instead kmem_cache_alloc and memset.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Tian Tao <tiantao6@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> ---
>  net/core/skbuff.c | 10 +++-------
>  1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-)
> 
> diff --git a/net/core/skbuff.c b/net/core/skbuff.c
> index c9a5a3c..3449c1c 100644
> --- a/net/core/skbuff.c
> +++ b/net/core/skbuff.c
> @@ -313,12 +313,10 @@ struct sk_buff *__build_skb(void *data, unsigned int frag_size)
>  {
>  	struct sk_buff *skb;
>  
> -	skb = kmem_cache_alloc(skbuff_head_cache, GFP_ATOMIC);
> +	skb = kmem_cache_zalloc(skbuff_head_cache, GFP_ATOMIC);

This will zeroed a slighly larger amount of data compared to the
existing code: offsetof(struct sk_buff, tail) == 182, sizeof(struct
sk_buff) == 224.

>  	if (unlikely(!skb))
>  		return NULL;
>  
> -	memset(skb, 0, offsetof(struct sk_buff, tail));

Additionally this leverages constant argument optimizations.

Possibly overall not noticeable, but this code path is quite critical
performance wise.

I would avoid the above.
> -
>  	return __build_skb_around(skb, data, frag_size);
>  }
>  
> @@ -6170,12 +6168,10 @@ static void *skb_ext_get_ptr(struct skb_ext *ext, enum skb_ext_id id)
>   */
>  struct skb_ext *__skb_ext_alloc(gfp_t flags)
>  {
> -	struct skb_ext *new = kmem_cache_alloc(skbuff_ext_cache, flags);
> +	struct skb_ext *new = kmem_cache_zalloc(skbuff_ext_cache, flags);
>  
> -	if (new) {
> -		memset(new->offset, 0, sizeof(new->offset));

Similar to the above, but additionally here the number of zeroed bytes
changes a lot and a few additional cachelines will be touched. The
performance impact is likely relevant.

Overall I think we should not do this.

Thanks,

Paolo