Re: [PATCH 0/2] crypto: zstd - avoid initializing the workspace twice

[Usama Arif <usama.arif@linux.dev>]

On Tue, 25 Aug 2026 15:06:00 -0700 Usama Arif <usama.arif@linux.dev> wrote:

> Both zstd_compress() and zstd_decompress() set up the shared per-CPU
> workspace as a C/DStream before walking the request, and then, when the
> first source and destination fragments each span the whole request, hand
> off to zstd_compress_one()/zstd_decompress_one(), which immediately
> overwrite that same ctx->wksp with a CCtx/DCtx. The stream setup is
> discarded without a byte having been processed.
> 
> That one-shot path is not a corner case: zswap always takes it when
> storing, and takes it for a load whenever the stored object lies within a
> single zsmalloc page.
> 
> These two patches defer the stream initialization to the first walk
> iteration that actually streams, guarded by a flag because that iteration
> can be reached more than once.
> 
> A 4 KiB crypto_acomp benchmark [1], twelve runs of nine 30,000-operation
> rounds. Bare metal is an Intel Xeon Platinum 8321HC, turbo off,
> performance governor, pinned to one core; the VM is a one-vCPU KVM guest
> on a faster host.
> 
>                   baseline    patched     delta
>   bare metal
>     compress      52,283 ns   51,038 ns   1,245 ns   2.4%
>     decompress     2,317 ns    1,998 ns     319 ns  13.8%
>   one-vCPU KVM
>     compress      16,675 ns   15,050 ns   1,625 ns   9.8%
>     decompress     3,516 ns    2,265 ns   1,251 ns  35.6%
> 
> The guest numbers are larger because the two CPUID instructions in
> ZSTD_cpuid() become unconditional VM exits there. 
> 
> [1] https://gist.github.com/uarif1/5cf02f0e22c23f0d1b3d84348f12914c

Hi,

Just wanted to check if there was any feedback or review of the series.

I think its a nice optimization and even with the CPUID instructions
getting cached [1], this is still needed. The improvement in baremetal
is not coming (just) from CPUID instructions.

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/all/20260901110850.1805747-1-usama.arif@linux.dev/

Thanks,
Usama