Re: [patch] x86, mm: pass in 'total' to __copy_from_user_*nocache()

[H. Peter Anvin]

Arjan van de Ven wrote:
> 
> the reason that movntq and co are faster is because you avoid the
> write-allocate behavior of the caches....
> 
> the cache polluting part of it I find hard to buy for general use (as
> this discussion shows)... that will be extremely hard to measure as
> a real huge thing, while the WA part is like a 1.5x to 2x thing.
> 

Note that hardware *can* (which is not the same thing as hardware
*will*) elide the write-allocate behavior.  We did that at Transmeta for
rep movs and certain other instructions which provably filled in entire
cache lines.  I haven't investigated if newer Intel CPUs do that in the
"fast rep movs" case.

	-hpa

-- 
H. Peter Anvin, Intel Open Source Technology Center
I work for Intel.  I don't speak on their behalf.

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