Re: [patch] x86: Fix incorrect __read_mostly on _boot_cpu_pda

[Ravikiran G Thirumalai]

On Fri, Jan 02, 2009 at 05:09:51PM +0100, Ingo Molnar wrote:
>
>* Ravikiran G Thirumalai <kiran@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> The pda rework (commit 3461b0af025251bbc6b3d56c821c6ac2de6f7209)
>> to remove static boot cpu pdas introduced a bug.  _boot_cpu_pda is the
>> actual pda used by the boot cpu and is definitely not "__read_mostly" and
>> ended up polluting the read mostly section with writes.  This bug caused
>> regression of about 8-10% on certain syscall intensive workloads.
>> 
>> Signed-off-by: Ravikiran Thirumalai <kiran@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
>applied to tip/x86/urgent, with a Cc: stable tag. Thanks,
>

Thanks!

Stable maintainers, please consider this for 2.6.27 stable as well
(in addition to 28).  (Attaching the tip/x86/urgent commit as reference to
the patch)

Thanks,
Kiran
commit 26799a63110dcbe81291ea53178f6b4810d07424
Author: Ravikiran G Thirumalai <kiran@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date:   Wed Dec 31 13:44:46 2008 -0800

    x86: fix incorrect __read_mostly on _boot_cpu_pda
    
    The pda rework (commit 3461b0af025251bbc6b3d56c821c6ac2de6f7209)
    to remove static boot cpu pdas introduced a performance bug.
    
    _boot_cpu_pda is the actual pda used by the boot cpu and is definitely
    not "__read_mostly" and ended up polluting the read mostly section with
    writes.  This bug caused regression of about 8-10% on certain syscall
    intensive workloads.
    
    Signed-off-by: Ravikiran Thirumalai <kiran@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
    Acked-by: Mike Travis <travis@xxxxxxx>
    Cc: <stable@xxxxxxxxxx>
    Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@xxxxxxx>

diff --git a/arch/x86/kernel/head64.c b/arch/x86/kernel/head64.c
index 388e05a..b9a4d8c 100644
--- a/arch/x86/kernel/head64.c
+++ b/arch/x86/kernel/head64.c
@@ -27,7 +27,7 @@
 #include <asm/trampoline.h>
 
 /* boot cpu pda */
-static struct x8664_pda _boot_cpu_pda __read_mostly;
+static struct x8664_pda _boot_cpu_pda;
 
 #ifdef CONFIG_SMP
 /*