Re: [PATCH RFC] [X86] Compile Option Os versus O2 on latest x86 platform

From: H. Peter Anvin
Date: Tue Dec 01 2009 - 11:16:28 EST


On 12/01/2009 02:14 AM, Arjan van de Ven wrote:
> On Tue, 1 Dec 2009 16:54:04 +0800
> "Ma, Ling" <ling.ma@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> Hi Ingo
>>
>> Thanks for your correction, so we use perf stat --repeat 3 to test
>> volano, tbench, and kbuild, Because netperf has multiple items we may
>> send out later.
>
> a key question is.. how much more memory do you have free due to -Os?
> (because memory is cache is performance on a system level as well)
> and how much less icache pressure is there?
>

>From the re-run, it sounds like the only test that actually shows a
significant difference is volano. From reading the numbers, it looks
like the improvements are almost exclusively in IPC i.e. better
scheduling -- all the other metrics are substantially worse; including a
10% increase in cache misses.

It would be interesting to see what functions are hot in volano. It
might very well be that we could get a boost without significantly bloat
the kernel as a whole by picking out a couple of hot object files and
compiling those with -O2 or -O3.

-hpa

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