Linux kernel mirror (for testing) git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git
kernel os linux

powerpc: Avoid taking a data miss on every userspace instruction miss

Early on in do_page_fault() we call store_updates_sp(), regardless of
the type of exception. For an instruction miss this doesn't make
sense, because we only use this information to detect if a data miss
is the result of a stack expansion instruction or not.

Worse still, it results in a data miss within every userspace
instruction miss handler, because we try and load the very instruction
we are about to install a pte for!

A simple exec microbenchmark runs 6% faster on POWER8 with this fix:

#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <unistd.h>

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
unsigned long left = atol(argv[1]);
char leftstr[16];

if (left-- == 0)
return 0;

sprintf(leftstr, "%ld", left);
execlp(argv[0], argv[0], leftstr, NULL);
perror("exec failed\n");

return 0;
}

Pass the number of iterations on the command line (eg 10000) and time
how long it takes to execute.

Signed-off-by: Anton Blanchard <anton@samba.org>
Signed-off-by: Michael Ellerman <mpe@ellerman.id.au>

authored by

Anton Blanchard and committed by
Michael Ellerman
a7a9dcd8 63f44d65

+1 -1
+1 -1
arch/powerpc/mm/fault.c
··· 287 287 * can result in fault, which will cause a deadlock when called with 288 288 * mmap_sem held 289 289 */ 290 - if (user_mode(regs)) 290 + if (!is_exec && user_mode(regs)) 291 291 store_update_sp = store_updates_sp(regs); 292 292 293 293 if (user_mode(regs))