lkml.org 
[lkml]   [2007]   [May]   [20]   [last100]   RSS Feed
Views: [wrap][no wrap]   [headers]  [forward] 
 
Messages in this thread
/
Date
From
SubjectRe: [rfc] increase struct page size?!
On Sun, May 20, 2007 at 01:46:47AM -0700, William Lee Irwin III wrote:
> On Sat, May 19, 2007 at 11:15:01AM -0700, William Lee Irwin III wrote:
> >> The cache cost argument is specious. Even misaligned, smaller is
> >> smaller.
>
> On Sun, May 20, 2007 at 07:22:29AM +0200, Nick Piggin wrote:
> > Of course smaller is smaller ;) Why would that make the cache cost
> > argument specious?
>
> It's not possible to ignore aggregation. For instance, for a subset
> of mem_map whose size ignoring alignment would otherwise fit in the
> cache to completely avoid sharing any cachelines between page
> structures requires page structures to be separated by at least one
> mem_map index. This is highly unlikely in uniform distributions.

But that wasn't my argument. I _know_ there are cases where the smaller
struct would be better, and I'm sure they would even arise in a running
kernel.


> On Sat, May 19, 2007 at 11:15:01AM -0700, William Lee Irwin III wrote:
> >> The cache footprint reduction is merely amortized,
> >> probabilistic, etc.
>
> On Sun, May 20, 2007 at 07:22:29AM +0200, Nick Piggin wrote:
> > I don't really know what you mean by this, or what part of my cache cost
> > argument you disagree with...
> > I think it is that you could construct mem_map access patterns, without
> > specifically looking at alignment, where a 56 byte struct page would suffer
> > about 75% more cache misses than a 64 byte aligned one (and you could also
> > get about 12% fewer cache misses with other access patterns).
> > I also think the kernel's mem_map access patterns would be more on the
> > random side, so overall would result in significantly fewer cache misses
> > with 64 byte aligned pages.
> > Which part do you disagree with?
>
> The lack of consideration of the average case. I'll see what I can smoke
> out there.

I _am_ considering the average case, and I consider the aligned structure
is likely to win on average :) I just don't have numbers for it yet.


-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/

\
 
 \ /
  Last update: 2007-05-20 11:29    [W:0.110 / U:0.812 seconds]
©2003-2020 Jasper Spaans|hosted at Digital Ocean and TransIP|Read the blog|Advertise on this site