Re: [PATCH] Remove implicit list prefetches for most cases

[Paul Moore <paul.moore@hp.com>]

On Wed, 2010-09-08 at 10:59 +0200, Andi Kleen wrote:
> From: Andi Kleen <ak@linux.intel.com>
> 
> We've had explicit list prefetches in list_for_each and friends
> for quite some time. According to Arjan they were originally
> added for K7 where they were a slight win.
> 
> It's doubtful they help very much today, especially on newer CPUs with
> aggressive prefetching. Most list_for_eachs bodies are quite short and
> the prefetch does not help if it doesn't happen sufficiently in advance
> or when the data is not really cache cold.
> 
> The feedback from CPU designers is that they don't like us using explicit
> prefetches unless there is a very good reason (and list_for_each* alone
> clearly isn't one)
> 
> Also the prefetches cause the list walks to generate bad code,
> increase the number of registers needed.

If prefetch() is generally considered a "Bad Thing", I'm OK with just
removing them from NetLabel; no need to rename and conditionalize.  I
put them in the netlbl_af[4,6]list_*() routines because those routines
were modeled after the normal list routines which had prefetches and I
just assumed someone much smarter had found them to be a win.

-- 
paul moore
linux @ hp