Re: [PATCH v2 0/3] x86: faster mb()+other barrier.h tweaks

From: Michael S. Tsirkin
Date: Tue Jan 26 2016 - 03:20:25 EST


On Tue, Jan 12, 2016 at 02:25:24PM -0800, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> On 01/12/16 14:10, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
> > mb() typically uses mfence on modern x86, but a micro-benchmark shows that it's
> > 2 to 3 times slower than lock; addl $0,(%%e/rsp) that we use on older CPUs.
> >
> > So let's use the locked variant everywhere - helps keep the code simple as
> > well.
> >
> > While I was at it, I found some inconsistencies in comments in
> > arch/x86/include/asm/barrier.h
> >
> > I hope I'm not splitting this up too much - the reason is I wanted to isolate
> > the code changes (that people might want to test for performance) from comment
> > changes approved by Linus, from (so far unreviewed) comment change I came up
> > with myself.
> >
> > Lightly tested on my system.
> >
> > Michael S. Tsirkin (3):
> > x86: drop mfence in favor of lock+addl
> > x86: drop a comment left over from X86_OOSTORE
> > x86: tweak the comment about use of wmb for IO
> >
>
> I would like to get feedback from the hardware team about the
> implications of this change, first.
>
> -hpa
>

Hi hpa,
Any luck getting some feedback on this one?

Thanks,

--
MST