[PATCH] x86/mm: stop prefetching the mmap semaphore on page faults

From: Mateusz Guzik
Date: Tue Apr 01 2025 - 10:35:43 EST


The prefetchw dates back decades and the fundamental notion of doing
something like this on a lock is shady.

Moreover, for few years now in the fast path faults are handled with RCU
+ per-vma locking, hopefully not even looking at the lock to begin with.

As such just remove it.

I did not see a point benchmarking this. Given that it is not expected
to be looked at by default justifies not doing the prefetch.

Signed-off-by: Mateusz Guzik <mjguzik@xxxxxxxxx>
---
arch/x86/mm/fault.c | 3 ---
1 file changed, 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/arch/x86/mm/fault.c b/arch/x86/mm/fault.c
index 296d294142c8..697432f63c59 100644
--- a/arch/x86/mm/fault.c
+++ b/arch/x86/mm/fault.c
@@ -13,7 +13,6 @@
#include <linux/mmiotrace.h> /* kmmio_handler, ... */
#include <linux/perf_event.h> /* perf_sw_event */
#include <linux/hugetlb.h> /* hstate_index_to_shift */
-#include <linux/prefetch.h> /* prefetchw */
#include <linux/context_tracking.h> /* exception_enter(), ... */
#include <linux/uaccess.h> /* faulthandler_disabled() */
#include <linux/efi.h> /* efi_crash_gracefully_on_page_fault()*/
@@ -1496,8 +1495,6 @@ DEFINE_IDTENTRY_RAW_ERRORCODE(exc_page_fault)

address = cpu_feature_enabled(X86_FEATURE_FRED) ? fred_event_data(regs) : read_cr2();

- prefetchw(&current->mm->mmap_lock);
-
/*
* KVM uses #PF vector to deliver 'page not present' events to guests
* (asynchronous page fault mechanism). The event happens when a
--
2.43.0