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From:   David Laight <David.Laight@ACULAB.COM>
To:     'David Howells' <dhowells@redhat.com>,
        Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
CC:     Pavel Begunkov <asml.silence@gmail.com>,
        Matthew Wilcox <willy@infradead.org>,
        Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk>,
        Alexander Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>,
        linux-fsdevel <linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org>,
        linux-block <linux-block@vger.kernel.org>,
        Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: RE: [PATCH 01/29] iov_iter: Switch to using a table of operations
Thread-Topic: [PATCH 01/29] iov_iter: Switch to using a table of operations
Thread-Index: AQHWwNQxMI88twW4zUSLxoYAnZFgBanUKLlw
Date:   Sun, 22 Nov 2020 13:58:10 +0000
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From: David Howells
> Sent: 22 November 2020 13:33
> 
> Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> wrote:
> 
> >  - I worry a bit about the indirect call overhead and spectre v2.
> 
> I don't know enough about how spectre v2 works to say if this would be a
> problem for the ops-table approach, but wouldn't it also affect the chain of
> conditional branches that we currently use, since it's branch-prediction
> based?

The advantage of the 'chain of branches' is that it can be converted
into a 'tree of branches' because the values are all separate bits.

So as well as putting the (expected) common one first; you can do:
	if (likely((a & (A | B))) {
		if (a & A) {
			code for A;
		} else {
			code for B;
	} else ...
So get better control over the branch sequence.
(Hopefully the compiler doesn't change the logic.
I want a dumb compiler that (mostly) compiles what I write!)

Part of the difficulty is deciding the common case.
There'll always be a benchmark that exercises an uncommon case.

Adding an indirect call does let you do things like adding
ITER_IOVER_SINGLE and ITER_KVEC_SINGLE that are used in the
common case of a single buffer fragment.
That might be a measurable gain.

It is also possible to optimise the common case to a direct
call (or even inline code) and use an indirect call for
everything else.

	David

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