2013-10-15 21:54:14

by Sander Eikelenboom

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Kconfig help entry for CONFIG_PARAVIRT_SPINLOCK

Hi Raghavendra,

Since the ticketlock series have landed in this mergewindow (thanks :-) ) the
help accompanying the Kconfig entry doesn't seem to reflect the current state well.

- Wasn't the whole purpose of the ticketlock series to mitigate this 5% performance hit to something
far less, so distro kernels could enable this for their normal kernels ?
I don't have the exact performance figures though.

- Perhaps the suggestion to enable this for supported hypervisors (Xen and KVM ?) could be added ?

--
Sander


CONFIG_PARAVIRT_SPINLOCKS:

Paravirtualized spinlocks allow a pvops backend to replace the
spinlock implementation with something virtualization-friendly
(for example, block the virtual CPU rather than spinning).

Unfortunately the downside is an up to 5% performance hit on
native kernels, with various workloads.

If you are unsure how to answer this question, answer N.

Symbol: PARAVIRT_SPINLOCKS [=y]
Type : boolean
Prompt: Paravirtualization layer for spinlocks
Location:
-> Processor type and features
-> Linux guest support (HYPERVISOR_GUEST [=y])
-> Enable paravirtualization code (PARAVIRT [=y])
Defined at arch/x86/Kconfig:632
Depends on: HYPERVISOR_GUEST [=y] && PARAVIRT [=y] && SMP [=y]
Selects: UNINLINE_SPIN_UNLOCK [=y]


2013-10-16 02:59:58

by Raghavendra K T

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: Kconfig help entry for CONFIG_PARAVIRT_SPINLOCK

On 10/16/2013 03:15 AM, Sander Eikelenboom wrote:
> Hi Raghavendra,
>
> Since the ticketlock series have landed in this mergewindow (thanks :-) ) the
> help accompanying the Kconfig entry doesn't seem to reflect the current state well.
>
> - Wasn't the whole purpose of the ticketlock series to mitigate this 5% performance hit to something
> far less, so distro kernels could enable this for their normal kernels ?
> I don't have the exact performance figures though.
>
> - Perhaps the suggestion to enable this for supported hypervisors (Xen and KVM ?) could be added ?

You are right. Thanks. I 'll send the patch to change the config text
soon.