Re: [PATCH] Fix kmem_cache_free performance regression in slab

From: Andrew Morton
Date: Thu Nov 29 2007 - 21:46:53 EST


On Thu, 29 Nov 2007 12:05:13 -0700 Matthew Wilcox <matthew@xxxxxx> wrote:

> The database performance group have found that half the cycles spent
> in kmem_cache_free are spent in this one call to BUG_ON. Moving it
> into the CONFIG_SLAB_DEBUG-only function cache_free_debugcheck() is a
> performance win of almost 0.5% on their particular benchmark.
>
> The call was added as part of commit ddc2e812d592457747c4367fb73edcaa8e1e49ff
> with the comment that "overhead should be minimal". It may have been
> minimal at the time, but it isn't now.
>

It is worth noting that the offending commit hit mainline in June 2006.

It takes a very long time for some performance regressions to be
discovered. By which time it is effectively too late to fix it.

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