Re: [process scheduler] Possible bug in context_swich()?

From: Tim Blechmann
Date: Thu Sep 09 2010 - 07:20:44 EST


On Thursday, September 09, 2010 12:39:06 pm Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Thu, 2010-09-09 at 04:32 +0200, Mike Galbraith wrote:
> > On Wed, 2010-09-08 at 17:54 +0200, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> > > On Wed, 2010-09-08 at 17:28 +0200, fabio de francesco wrote:
> > > > In context_switch() (in linux/kernel/sched.c), starting with release
> > > > 2.6.33, two "unlikely" macro have been changed to "likely". I think
> > > > the previous logic was right while the latter is wrong.
> > > >
> > > > In case I am missing something I, please, ask someone to explain the
> > > > above mentioned inversion of logic through releases.
> > >
> > > It helps if you CC people, LKML alone is a bit of a gamble.
> > >
> > > git blame kernel/sched.c, will tell you that the change you refer to
> > > comes from:
> > >
> > > commit 710390d90f143a9ebb87a475215140f426792efd
> > > Author: Tim Blechmann <tim@xxxxxxxxxx>
> > > Date: Tue Nov 24 11:55:27 2009 +0100
> > >
> > > sched: Optimize branch hint in context_switch()
> > >
> > > Branch hint profiling on my nehalem machine showed over 90%
> >
> > > incorrect branch hints:
> > That change never made any sense to me, seems Tim must have been
> > measuring a kthread load. I benched at the time, and saw absolutely
> > zero difference one way or the other wrt max ctx rate on my Q6600.
>
> One option is to simply remove the whole branch hint.. But lets ask Tim
> what kind of workload he used..

i was using a standard desktop workload, nothing special ...

--
tim@xxxxxxxxxx
http://tim.klingt.org

Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it
disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating.
John Cage

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