alloc_percpu() fails to allocate percpu data
Some oprofile results obtained while using tbench on a 2x2 cpu machine were
very surprising.
For example, loopback_xmit() function was using high number of cpu cycles
to perform the statistic updates, supposed to be real cheap since they use
percpu data
pcpu_lstats = netdev_priv(dev);
lb_stats = per_cpu_ptr(pcpu_lstats, smp_processor_id());
lb_stats->packets++; /* HERE : serious contention */
lb_stats->bytes += skb->len;
struct pcpu_lstats is a small structure containing two longs. It appears
that on my 32bits platform, alloc_percpu(8) allocates a single cache line,
instead of giving to each cpu a separate cache line.
Using the following patch gave me impressive boost in various benchmarks
( 6 % in tbench)
(all percpu_counters hit this bug too)
Long term fix (ie >= 2.6.26) would be to let each CPU allocate their own
block of memory, so that we dont need to roudup sizes to L1_CACHE_BYTES, or
merging the SGI stuff of course....
parent
e3892296
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