Re: [PATCH] rhashtable: specialize default comparison for constant parameters

[Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>]

On Thu, Sep 24, 2026 at 11:47:33AM -0700, Usama Arif wrote:
> The inline lookup and insert helpers receive the rhashtable parameters by
> value. With a static const parameter block, key_offset and key_len are
> compile-time constants at the call site.
> 
> The default comparison throws that information away by reading both fields
> back from ht->p. Fixed-size keys consequently load the parameters and call
> bcmp() for every object in the bucket, even when the compiler could use
> scalar comparisons instead.
> 
> The commit "sched_ext: Specialize the DSQ hashtable compare" [1] resulted
> in a 2.9x faster DSQ lookup after replacing this path for its u64 key
> with a scalar comparison. Doing that through obj_cmpfn requires every
> fixed-key user to provide its own callback.
> 
> Pass the call-site parameters to rhashtable_compare(), as
> rht_key_get_hash() already does. Use them when key_len is a compile-time
> constant. Retain the ht->p path for dynamic parameter blocks. A constant
> zero key_len continues to take the runtime length from ht->p.key_len.
> 
> This specializes the default comparison for all fixed-size users. With
> Clang 22 on x86-64, bcmp() disappears from sched_ext, mac80211, NFSd,
> TIPC, NFQUEUE, VFS superblock, pidfs, SysV IPC and hardware-breakpoint
> table paths. The affected build_policy.o, sta_info.o and nfsd filecache.o
> text shrinks by 512, 400 and 352 bytes respectively. Four- and eight-byte
> keys become direct scalar comparisons; six-byte MAC addresses become a
> four-byte and a two-byte comparison.
> 
> Measure the VFS case with ustat() on a mounted ramfs. This exercises
> user_get_super() and its super_dev lookup. Across ten interleaved baseline
> and patched VM boot pairs, with five 3 million call samples per boot, the
> average per-boot median latency drops from 477.2 to 462.6 ns per call, or
> 3.0%. All ten pairs improved.
> 
> No functional change intended.
> 
> [1] https://lore.kernel.org/all/20260921171928.1639407-1-usama.arif@linux.dev/
> 
> Suggested-by: Mykola Lysenko <nickolay.lysenko@gmail.com>
> Signed-off-by: Usama Arif <usama.arif@linux.dev>

This is great.

Acked-by: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>

Thanks.

-- 
tejun