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Date: Tue, 10 Mar 2015 14:26:06 +0100
From: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>
To: Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net>
Cc: Denys Vlasenko <dvlasenk@redhat.com>,
        Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>,
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        Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>, X86 ML <x86@kernel.org>,
        "linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org" <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 3/4] x86: save user rsp in pt_regs->sp on SYSCALL64
 fastpath
Message-ID: <20150310132606.GC26185@gmail.com>
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* Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net> wrote:

> > Since this patch does add two extra MOVs,
> > I did benchmark these patches. They add exactly one cycle
> > to system call code path on my Sandy Bridge CPU.
> 
> Personally, I'm willing to pay that cycle.  It could be a bigger 
> savings on context switch, and the simplification it enables is 
> pretty good.

But, but ... context switches are a relative slow path, compared to 
system calls. And I say this with the scheduler maintainer hat on as 
well.

So this is not a good bargain IMHO, assuming it's not some _huge_ 
difference in maintainability - but having an extra percpu field
isn't really much of a problem.

I don't claim that we couldn't in some other situation decide that a 
certain type of speedup isn't worth it - but what's the big problem 
here? A bit of arithmetics shouldn't be a problem?

Thanks,

	Ingo