Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S933191AbYBTVDx (ORCPT ); Wed, 20 Feb 2008 16:03:53 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1753665AbYBTVDn (ORCPT ); Wed, 20 Feb 2008 16:03:43 -0500 Received: from netops-testserver-3-out.sgi.com ([192.48.171.28]:53628 "EHLO relay.sgi.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-FAIL) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752743AbYBTVDl (ORCPT ); Wed, 20 Feb 2008 16:03:41 -0500 Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 15:03:39 -0600 From: Jack Steiner To: Andrea Arcangeli Cc: Nick Piggin , akpm@linux-foundation.org, Robin Holt , Avi Kivity , Izik Eidus , kvm-devel@lists.sourceforge.net, Peter Zijlstra , general@lists.openfabrics.org, Steve Wise , Roland Dreier , Kanoj Sarcar , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-mm@kvack.org, daniel.blueman@quadrics.com, Christoph Lameter Subject: Re: [PATCH] mmu notifiers #v6 Message-ID: <20080220210339.GA25659@sgi.com> References: <20080219084357.GA22249@wotan.suse.de> <20080219135851.GI7128@v2.random> <20080219231157.GC18912@wotan.suse.de> <20080220010941.GR7128@v2.random> <20080220103942.GU7128@v2.random> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20080220103942.GU7128@v2.random> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.9i Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1845 Lines: 41 On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 11:39:42AM +0100, Andrea Arcangeli wrote: > Given Nick's comments I ported my version of the mmu notifiers to > latest mainline. There are no known bugs AFIK and it's obviously safe > (nothing is allowed to schedule inside rcu_read_lock taken by > mmu_notifier() with my patch). > .... I ported the GRU driver to use the latest #v6 patch and ran a series of tests on it using our system simulator. The simulator is slow so true stress or swapping is not possible - at least within a finite amount of time. Functionally, the #v6 patch seems to work for the GRU. However, I did notice two significant differences that make the #v6 performance worse for the GRU than Christoph's patch. I think one difference is easily fixable but the other is more difficult: - the location of the mmu_notifier_release() callout is at a different place in the 2 patches. Christoph has the callout BEFORE the call to unmap_vmas() whereas you have it AFTER. The net result is that the GRU does a LOT of 1-page TLB flushes during process teardown. These flushes are not done with Christops's patch. - the range callouts in Christoph's patch benefit the GRU because multiple TLB entries can be flushed with a single GRU instruction (the GRU hardware supports a range flush using a vaddr & length). The #v6 patch does a TLB flush for each page in the range. Flushing on the GRU is slow so being able to flush multiple pages with a single request is a benefit. Seems like the latter difference could be significant for other users of mmu notifiers. --- jack -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/