Re: [PATCH v5 1/6] libnvdimm: nd_region flush callback support

Jeff Moyer
2019-04-22T15:51:35Z

Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com> writes:

> On Thu, Apr 18, 2019 at 9:18 AM Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org> wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Apr 18, 2019 at 09:05:05AM -0700, Dan Williams wrote:
>> > > > I'd either add a comment about avoiding retpoline overhead here or just
>> > > > make ->flush == NULL mean generic_nvdimm_flush(). Just so that people don't
>> > > > get confused by the code.
>> > >
>> > > Isn't this premature optimization? I really don't like adding things
>> > > like this without some numbers to show it's worth it.
>> >
>> > I don't think it's premature given this optimization technique is
>> > already being deployed elsewhere, see:
>> >
>> > https://lwn.net/Articles/774347/
>>
>> For one this one was backed by numbers, and second after feedback
>> from Linux we switched to the NULL pointer check instead.
>
> Ok I should have noticed the switch to NULL pointer check. However,
> the question still stands do we want everyone to run numbers to
> justify this optimization, or make it a new common kernel coding
> practice to do:
>
> if (!object->op)
> generic_op(object);
> else
> object->op(object);
>
> ...in hot paths?

I don't think nvdimm_flush is a hot path. Numbers of some
representative workload would prove one of us right.

-Jeff