From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Jeff Garzik Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/2 resend] libata-sff: avoid byte swapping in ata_sff_data_xfer() Date: Sun, 15 Feb 2009 14:48:10 -0500 Message-ID: <4998717A.2090507@pobox.com> References: <200902152230.38271.sshtylyov@ru.mvista.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: Received: from srv5.dvmed.net ([207.36.208.214]:54229 "EHLO mail.dvmed.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751345AbZBOTsR (ORCPT ); Sun, 15 Feb 2009 14:48:17 -0500 In-Reply-To: <200902152230.38271.sshtylyov@ru.mvista.com> Sender: linux-ide-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-ide@vger.kernel.org To: Sergei Shtylyov Cc: linux-ide@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk Sergei Shtylyov wrote: > Handling of the trailing byte in ata_sff_data_xfer() is suboptimal bacause: > > - it always initializes the padding buffer to 0 which is not really needed in > both the read and write cases; > > - it has to use memcpy() to transfer a single byte from/to the padding buffer; Have you looked at the assembly, before deciding it is suboptiomal? gcc optimizes tiny arrays and structures quite well, and is well capable of seeing one path where the initialization is clobbered without a single read, and another code path where it is used. As for memcpy, for small and/or constant values that is quite often a compiler builtin. It is rarely useful, these days, to convert a memcpy() to a hand-rolled version of same. Jeff