Re: [PATCH RFC/RFT v2 4/4] riscv: Stop emitting preventive sfence.vma for new userspace mappings with Svvptc

[Andrea Parri]

On Wed, Jan 31, 2024 at 04:59:29PM +0100, Alexandre Ghiti wrote:
> The preventive sfence.vma were emitted because new mappings must be made
> visible to the page table walker but Svvptc guarantees that xRET act as
> a fence, so no need to sfence.vma for the uarchs that implement this
> extension.

AFAIU, your first submission shows that you don't need that xRET property.
Similarly for other archs.  What was rationale behind this Svvptc change?


> This allows to drastically reduce the number of sfence.vma emitted:
> 
> * Ubuntu boot to login:
> Before: ~630k sfence.vma
> After:  ~200k sfence.vma
> 
> * ltp - mmapstress01
> Before: ~45k
> After:  ~6.3k
> 
> * lmbench - lat_pagefault
> Before: ~665k
> After:   832 (!)
> 
> * lmbench - lat_mmap
> Before: ~546k
> After:   718 (!)

This Svvptc seems to move/add the "burden" of the synchronization to xRET:
Perhaps integrate the above counts w/ the perf gains in the cover letter?

  Andrea