From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1750903AbWDQAqT (ORCPT ); Sun, 16 Apr 2006 20:46:19 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1750905AbWDQAqS (ORCPT ); Sun, 16 Apr 2006 20:46:18 -0400 Received: from ms-smtp-01.nyroc.rr.com ([24.24.2.55]:32451 "EHLO ms-smtp-01.nyroc.rr.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750902AbWDQAqR (ORCPT ); Sun, 16 Apr 2006 20:46:17 -0400 Subject: Re: [PATCH 00/05] robust per_cpu allocation for modules From: Steven Rostedt To: Arnd Bergmann Cc: Paul Mackerras , Nick Piggin , LKML , Andrew Morton , Linus Torvalds , Ingo Molnar , Thomas Gleixner , Andi Kleen , Martin Mares , bjornw@axis.com, schwidefsky@de.ibm.com, benedict.gaster@superh.com, lethal@linux-sh.org, Chris Zankel , Marc Gauthier , Joe Taylor , David Mosberger-Tang , rth@twiddle.net, spyro@f2s.com, starvik@axis.com, tony.luck@intel.com, linux-ia64@vger.kernel.org, ralf@linux-mips.org, linux-mips@linux-mips.org, grundler@parisc-linux.org, parisc-linux@parisc-linux.org, linuxppc-dev@ozlabs.org, linux390@de.ibm.com, davem@davemloft.net, rusty@rustcorp.com.au In-Reply-To: <200604161734.20256.arnd@arndb.de> References: <1145049535.1336.128.camel@localhost.localdomain> <17473.60411.690686.714791@cargo.ozlabs.ibm.com> <1145194804.27407.103.camel@localhost.localdomain> <200604161734.20256.arnd@arndb.de> Content-Type: text/plain Date: Sun, 16 Apr 2006 20:45:50 -0400 Message-Id: <1145234750.27828.8.camel@localhost.localdomain> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.4.2.1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Sun, 2006-04-16 at 17:34 +0200, Arnd Bergmann wrote: > On Sunday 16 April 2006 15:40, Steven Rostedt wrote: > > I'll think more about this, but maybe someone else has some crazy ideas > > that can find a solution to this that is both fast and robust. > > Ok, you asked for a crazy idea, you're going to get it ;-) > > You could take a fixed range from the vmalloc area (e.g. 1MB per cpu) > and use that to remap pages on demand when you need per cpu data. > > #define PER_CPU_BASE 0xe000000000000000UL /* arch dependant */ > #define PER_CPU_SHIFT 0x100000UL > #define __per_cpu_offset(__cpu) (PER_CPU_BASE + PER_CPU_STRIDE * (__cpu)) > #define per_cpu(var, cpu) (*RELOC_HIDE(&per_cpu__##var, __per_cpu_offset(cpu))) > #define __get_cpu_var(var) per_cpu(var, smp_processor_id()) > > This is a lot like the current sparc64 implementation already is. > Hmm, interesting idea. > The tricky part here is the remapping of pages. You'd need to > alloc_pages_node() new pages whenever the already reserved space is > not enough for the module you want to load and then map_vm_area() > them into the space reserved for them. > > Advantages of this solution are: > - no dependant load access for per_cpu() > - might be flexible enough to implement a faster per_cpu_ptr() > - can be combined with ia64-style per-cpu remapping > > Disadvantages are: > - you can't use huge tlbs for mapping per cpu data like the > regular linear mapping -> may be slower on some archs > - does not work in real mode, so percpu data can't be used > inside exception handlers on some architectures. This is probably a big issue. I believe interrupt context in hrtimers uses per_cpu variables. > - memory consumption is rather high when PAGE_SIZE is large That's also something that I'm trying to solve. To use the least amount of memory and still have the performance. Now, I've also thought about allocating per_cpu and when a module is loaded, reallocate more memory and copy it again. Use something like the kstopmachine to sync the system so that the CPUS don't update any per_cpu variables while this is happening, so that things can't get out of sync. This shouldn't be too much of an issue, since this would only be done when a module is being loaded, and that is a user event that doesn't happen often. We would still need to use the method of keeping track of what is allocated and freed, so that when a module is unloaded, we can still free the area in the per_cpu data. And reallocate that area if a module is added that uses less or the same amount of memory as what was freed. -- Steve