Re: [RFC PATCH 0/7] mm: Get rid of vmalloc_sync_(un)mappings()

Peter Zijlstra
2020-05-11T17:02:21Z

On Mon, May 11, 2020 at 08:52:04AM -0700, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> On Mon, May 11, 2020 at 09:31:34AM +0200, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> > On Sat, May 09, 2020 at 06:11:57PM -0700, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> > > Iterating an XArray (whether the entire thing
> > > or with marks) is RCU-safe and faster than iterating a linked list,
> > > so this should solve the problem?
> >
> > It can hardly be faster if you want all elements -- which is I think the
> > case here. We only call into this if we change an entry, and then we
> > need to propagate that change to all.
>
> Of course it can be faster. Iterating an array is faster than iterating
> a linked list because caches. While an XArray is a segmented array
> (so slower than a plain array), it's plainly going to be faster than
> iterating a linked list.

Fair enough, mostly also because the actual work (setting a single PTE)
doesn't dominate in this case.