I noticed this vmlinux layout on i686 (where CONFIG_X86_L1_CACHE_SHIFT = 7) : c06cdab4 d pid_caches_lh c06cdb00 d qlowmark c06cdb04 d qhimark c06cdb08 d blimit c06cdb80 d rcu_ctrlblk c06cdc80 d rcu_bh_ctrlblk This means that qlowmark, qhimark and blimit use a whole 128 bytes cache line. Linker is not smart enough for us. Moving these three variables to read_mostly section saves 116 (128-12) bytes. # size vmlinux vmlinux.before_patch text data bss dec hex filename 6343966 490818 630784 7465568 71ea60 vmlinux 6343966 490930 630784 7465680 71ead0 vmlinux.before_patch Signed-off-by: Eric Dumazet