aboutsummaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/manual
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
authorPatrick McGehearty <patrick.mcgehearty@oracle.com>2020-09-28 20:11:28 +0000
committerPatrick McGehearty <patrick.mcgehearty@oracle.com>2020-09-28 22:10:39 +0000
commitd3c57027470b78dba79c6d931e4e409b1fecfc80 (patch)
tree87e3e6a7f9aa520f98a576ddd5d56b33ebc90054 /manual
parentb16f282cb079980ddb4de5c9a2350e8b1919d023 (diff)
downloadglibc-d3c57027470b78dba79c6d931e4e409b1fecfc80.zip
glibc-d3c57027470b78dba79c6d931e4e409b1fecfc80.tar.gz
glibc-d3c57027470b78dba79c6d931e4e409b1fecfc80.tar.bz2
Reversing calculation of __x86_shared_non_temporal_threshold
The __x86_shared_non_temporal_threshold determines when memcpy on x86 uses non_temporal stores to avoid pushing other data out of the last level cache. This patch proposes to revert the calculation change made by H.J. Lu's patch of June 2, 2017. H.J. Lu's patch selected a threshold suitable for a single thread getting maximum performance. It was tuned using the single threaded large memcpy micro benchmark on an 8 core processor. The last change changes the threshold from using 3/4 of one thread's share of the cache to using 3/4 of the entire cache of a multi-threaded system before switching to non-temporal stores. Multi-threaded systems with more than a few threads are server-class and typically have many active threads. If one thread consumes 3/4 of the available cache for all threads, it will cause other active threads to have data removed from the cache. Two examples show the range of the effect. John McCalpin's widely parallel Stream benchmark, which runs in parallel and fetches data sequentially, saw a 20% slowdown with this patch on an internal system test of 128 threads. This regression was discovered when comparing OL8 performance to OL7. An example that compares normal stores to non-temporal stores may be found at https://vgatherps.github.io/2018-09-02-nontemporal/. A simple test shows performance loss of 400 to 500% due to a failure to use nontemporal stores. These performance losses are most likely to occur when the system load is heaviest and good performance is critical. The tunable x86_non_temporal_threshold can be used to override the default for the knowledgable user who really wants maximum cache allocation to a single thread in a multi-threaded system. The manual entry for the tunable has been expanded to provide more information about its purpose. modified: sysdeps/x86/cacheinfo.c modified: manual/tunables.texi
Diffstat (limited to 'manual')
-rw-r--r--manual/tunables.texi6
1 files changed, 5 insertions, 1 deletions
diff --git a/manual/tunables.texi b/manual/tunables.texi
index 23ef0d4..d72d7a5 100644
--- a/manual/tunables.texi
+++ b/manual/tunables.texi
@@ -432,7 +432,11 @@ set shared cache size in bytes for use in memory and string routines.
@deftp Tunable glibc.cpu.x86_non_temporal_threshold
The @code{glibc.cpu.x86_non_temporal_threshold} tunable allows the user
-to set threshold in bytes for non temporal store.
+to set threshold in bytes for non temporal store. Non temporal stores
+give a hint to the hardware to move data directly to memory without
+displacing other data from the cache. This tunable is used by some
+platforms to determine when to use non temporal stores in operations
+like memmove and memcpy.
This tunable is specific to i386 and x86-64.
@end deftp