From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Ingo Molnar Subject: Re: AIM7 40% regression with 2.6.26-rc1 Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 19:22:46 +0200 Message-ID: <20080507172246.GA13262@elte.hu> References: <1210052904.3453.30.camel@ymzhang> <20080506114449.GC32591@elte.hu> <20080506120934.GH19219@parisc-linux.org> <20080506162332.GI19219@parisc-linux.org> <20080506102153.5484c6ac.akpm@linux-foundation.org> <20080507163811.GY19219@parisc-linux.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: Matthew Wilcox , Andrew Morton , "J. Bruce Fields" , "Zhang, Yanmin" , LKML , Alexander Viro , linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org To: Linus Torvalds Return-path: Received: from mx3.mail.elte.hu ([157.181.1.138]:33716 "EHLO mx3.mail.elte.hu" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751572AbYEGRXE (ORCPT ); Wed, 7 May 2008 13:23:04 -0400 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: Sender: linux-fsdevel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: * Linus Torvalds wrote: > Which is why I'm 100% convinced it's not even worth saving the old > code. It needs to use mutexes, or spinlocks. I bet it has *nothing* to > do with "slow path" other than the fact that it gets to that slow path > much more these days. i think your theory should be easy to test: Yanmin, could you turn on CONFIG_MUTEX_DEBUG=y and check by how much AIM7 regresses? Because in the CONFIG_MUTEX_DEBUG=y case the mutex debug code does exactly that: it doesnt use the single-instruction fastpath [it uses asm-generic/mutex-null.h] but always drops into the slowpath (to be able to access debug state). That debug code is about as expensive as the generic semaphore code's current fastpath. (perhaps even more expensive.) There's far more normal mutex fastpath use during an AIM7 run than any BKL use. So if it's due to any direct fastpath overhead and the resulting widening of the window for the real slowdown, we should see a severe slowdown on AIM7 with CONFIG_MUTEX_DEBUG=y. Agreed? Ingo