LWN.net Logo

Re: RFC: remove __read_mostly

From:  Andrew Morton <akpm-AT-linux-foundation.org>
To:  Andi Kleen <andi-AT-firstfloor.org>
Subject:  Re: RFC: remove __read_mostly
Date:  Mon, 17 Dec 2007 02:33:39 -0800
Message-ID:  <20071217023339.ce3da56c.akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Cc:  Kyle McMartin <kyle-AT-mcmartin.ca>, Adrian Bunk <bunk-AT-kernel.org>, linux-kernel-AT-vger.kernel.org, linux-arch-AT-vger.kernel.org
Archive-link:  Article, Thread

On Fri, 14 Dec 2007 01:33:45 +0100 Andi Kleen <andi@firstfloor.org> wrote:

> Kyle McMartin <kyle@mcmartin.ca> writes:
> 
> > I'd bet, in the __read_mostly case at least, that there's no
> > improvement in almost all cases.
> 
> I bet you're wrong. Cache line behaviour is critical, much more
> than pipeline behaviour (which unlikely affects). That is because
> if you eat a cache miss it gets really expensive, which e.g.
> a mispredicted jump is relatively cheap in comparison. We're talking
> one or more orders of magnitude.

So...  once we've moved all read-mostly variables into __read_mostly, what
is left behind in bss?

All the write-often variables.  All optimally packed together to nicely
maximise cacheline sharing.
--
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/



(Log in to post comments)

Copyright © 2007, Eklektix, Inc.
Comments and public postings are copyrighted by their creators.
Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds