Re: [PATCH v2 00/11] Add a percpu subsection for cache hot data

[Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>]

On Wed, Feb 26, 2025 at 01:05:19PM -0500, Brian Gerst wrote:
> Add a new percpu subsection for data that is frequently accessed and
> exclusive to each processor.  This replaces the pcpu_hot struct on x86,
> and is available to all architectures and the core kernel.
> 
> ffffffff842fa000 D __per_cpu_hot_start
> ffffffff842fa000 D hardirq_stack_ptr
> ffffffff842fa008 D __ref_stack_chk_guard
> ffffffff842fa008 D __stack_chk_guard
> ffffffff842fa010 D const_cpu_current_top_of_stack
> ffffffff842fa010 D cpu_current_top_of_stack
> ffffffff842fa018 D const_current_task
> ffffffff842fa018 D current_task
> ffffffff842fa020 D __x86_call_depth
> ffffffff842fa028 D this_cpu_off
> ffffffff842fa030 D __preempt_count
> ffffffff842fa034 D cpu_number
> ffffffff842fa038 D __softirq_pending
> ffffffff842fa03a D hardirq_stack_inuse
> ffffffff842fa040 D __per_cpu_hot_end

The above is useful, but not quite as useful as looking at:

$ pahole -C pcpu_hot defconfig-build/vmlinux.o
struct pcpu_hot {
        union {
                struct {
                        struct task_struct * current_task; /*     0     8 */
                        int        preempt_count;        /*     8     4 */
                        int        cpu_number;           /*    12     4 */
                        u64        call_depth;           /*    16     8 */
                        long unsigned int top_of_stack;  /*    24     8 */
                        void *     hardirq_stack_ptr;    /*    32     8 */
                        u16        softirq_pending;      /*    40     2 */
                        bool       hardirq_stack_inuse;  /*    42     1 */
                };                                       /*     0    48 */
                u8                 pad[64];              /*     0    64 */
        };                                               /*     0    64 */

        /* size: 64, cachelines: 1, members: 1 */
};

A slightly more useful variant of your listing would be:

$ readelf -Ws defconfig-build/vmlinux | sort -k 2 | awk 'BEGIN {p=0} /__per_cpu_hot_start/ {p=1} { if (p) print $2 " " $3 " " $8 } /__per_cpu_hot_end/ {p=0}'
ffffffff834f5000 0 __per_cpu_hot_start
ffffffff834f5000 8 hardirq_stack_ptr
ffffffff834f5008 0 __ref_stack_chk_guard
ffffffff834f5008 8 __stack_chk_guard
ffffffff834f5010 0 const_cpu_current_top_of_stack
ffffffff834f5010 8 cpu_current_top_of_stack
ffffffff834f5018 0 const_current_task
ffffffff834f5018 8 current_task
ffffffff834f5020 8 __x86_call_depth
ffffffff834f5028 8 this_cpu_off
ffffffff834f5030 4 __preempt_count
ffffffff834f5034 4 cpu_number
ffffffff834f5038 2 __softirq_pending
ffffffff834f503a 1 hardirq_stack_inuse
ffffffff834f5040 0 __per_cpu_hot_end

as it also gets the size for each symbol. Allowing us to compute the
hole as 0x40-0x3b, or 5 bytes.