Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1753838AbZLAJTa (ORCPT ); Tue, 1 Dec 2009 04:19:30 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1753690AbZLAJT3 (ORCPT ); Tue, 1 Dec 2009 04:19:29 -0500 Received: from bhuna.collabora.co.uk ([93.93.128.226]:59799 "EHLO bhuna.collabora.co.uk" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753497AbZLAJT2 (ORCPT ); Tue, 1 Dec 2009 04:19:28 -0500 Message-ID: <4B14DF79.8010908@collabora.co.uk> Date: Tue, 01 Dec 2009 09:18:49 +0000 From: Ian Molton User-Agent: Mozilla-Thunderbird 2.0.0.22 (X11/20090707) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Matt Mackall CC: Rusty Russell , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/2] hw_random: core updates to allow more efficient drivers References: <1259177252.2858.17.camel@calx> <1259195127-20086-2-git-send-email-ian.molton@collabora.co.uk> <1259197403.2858.88.camel@calx> <200911282035.26847.rusty@rustcorp.com.au> <4B139E3D.1020905@collabora.co.uk> <1259606656.29740.48.camel@calx> In-Reply-To: <1259606656.29740.48.camel@calx> X-Enigmail-Version: 0.96.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1648 Lines: 38 Matt Mackall wrote: > On Mon, 2009-11-30 at 10:28 +0000, Ian Molton wrote: >> Rusty Russell wrote: >> >>> And might as well just #defube RNG_BUFFSIZE SMP_CACHE_BYTES (or use >>> SMP_CACHE_BYTES here and sizeof() elsewhere). >> This can lead to a rather small (4 byte) buffer on some systems, however >> I don't know if in practice a tiny buffer or a big one would be better >> for performance on those machines. I guess if its a problem someone can >> patch the code to allocate a minimum of (say) 16 bytes in future... > > Hmmm, I think this was bad advice from Rusty. Not entirely... > The goal is to size and align the buffer so that we know it will always > work. Thus 64 bytes (always big enough but not so big that anyone will > complain) and cache aligned (makes stupid things like Via Padlock happy > -on Vias-). yep. Although making it the size of a cacheline makes sense on /most/ modern architectures - 32 bytes is a very common size - I think the (current) worst case is one of the drivers wants to dump 3 u64s in one go. virtio-rng will take what it can... > Rusty's suggestion could easily have us in trouble if some driver wants > to hand us a mere 64 bits on an architecture with 4-byte cache alignment > but is otherwise perfectly happy with 64-bit stores. How about SNP_CACHE_BYTES or if less, then 32 bytes minimum? Or just stick with 64 bytes. Either way works for me. -Ian -- 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/