Re: Add prefetch switch stack hook in scheduler function

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Ingo Molnar wrote:
* Nick Piggin <[email protected]> wrote:

[...]

	prefetch_area(void *first_addr, void *last_addr)

(or as addr,len)


Yep. We have prefetch_range.



Yeah, then a specific field _within_ next->mm or thread_info may want to be fetched. In short, I don't see any argument why we shouldn't call the function prefetch_task().


it's a fundamental thing: we _dont_ want to push generic code into architectures, and there's nothing per-arch about next->mm.


Yeah, I mean within mm, ie. prefetch(&mm->random_cacheline).

Secondly, I don't really like your prefetch(kernel_stack()) function because it doesn't really give architectures enough control over exactly what cachelines they get in memory.


my point is, it comes down to concrete examples, it may or may not make sense to do things per-arch.


I thought the concrete example there was ia64's switch_stack,
which looks to be over half a K... oh I see you've asked Ken
whether this will be sufficient. OK in that case let's wait and
see.


[...] I see nothing wrong with having a prefetch_task() call. (Although I agree things like thread_info->flags and next->mm can be done in generic code).


great that we now agree wrt. thread_info and next->mm. My remaining point is, once we prefetch ->thread_info, ->mm and the kernel stack, nothing else significant remains! (It's still very much possible that something needs to be prefetched per-arch, but i'd like to see a robust case be made for it, instead of your global 'it might happen' argument.)


Well to be clear, I think we have always agreed, except that I
thought it 'did happen' with the ia64 example. If it turns out
that your prefetch is good enough then I will have been mistaken.

Actually to be even clearer, I was never really arguing about what
to prefetch or whether to prefetch from arch code or not. Just that
the name, if any, should be prefetch_task as opposed to
prefetch_stack :)

Nick

--
SUSE Labs, Novell Inc.

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