Re: [PATCH] mm: optimize the implementation of WARN_ON_ONCE_GFP()

[David Laight <david.laight.linux@gmail.com>]

On Tue, 10 Mar 2026 11:55:55 +0100
"Vlastimil Babka (SUSE)" <vbabka@kernel.org> wrote:

> On 3/9/26 16:59, Xie Yuanbin wrote:
> > On Mon, 9 Mar 2026 15:40:13 +0000, Matthew Wilcox wrote:  
> >>On Mon, Mar 09, 2026 at 11:38:11PM +0800, Xie Yuanbin wrote:  
> >>> As shown in the commit message of commit 242b872239f6a7deacbc
> >>> ("include/linux/once_lite.h: fix judgment in WARN_ONCE with clang"),
> >>> the code "unlikely(a && b)" may generate poor assembly code if it is
> >>> actually "unlikely(a) && unlikely(b)" or "unlikely(a) && b".  
> >>
> >> Why fix this in multiple places in the kernel instead of once in clang?  
> > 
> > If a and b is both unlikely, then "unlikely(a) && unlikely(b)" will
> > generate better code than "unlikely(a && b)". This is also true for gcc.  
> 
> What are the details of how it's better for gcc?

I'm not sure about that specific case, but I've definitely seen gcc
generate sub-optimal code for some un/likely() of compound expressions.
The underlying cause is that the code is (probably) first transformed to:
	bool tmp = expression;
	if (unlikely(tmp)) ...
this means that you lose some of the short-circuiting that happens
early in the code generation of 'if (expression)'.

It is also not at all clear what you want the compiler to generate.
For 'unlikely(a || b)' you want 'if (a) goto x; if (b) goto x' so that
the 'likely' path is the no-branch one.
But for 'unlikely(a && b)' you still want 'if (a) goto x; y:' which means
that the 'b' test is out-of-line and has to be 'x: if (!b) goto y' to
avoid a branch when a is false - but that means you have a 'normally
taken' branch after the test of b.
That pretty much means the compiler has to decide which unlikely()
to ignore.
So it only makes sense to do 'if (unlikely(a) && b)'.
Indeed even 'if (unlikely(a) && likely(b))' may be better!

	David

> 
> > As for the issue of clang judging twice, I have already submitted it to
> > clang:
> > Link: https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/issues/167117
> > However, even if clang fixes it, this optimization will not be merged
> > back to the old version of clang.  
> 
> That's life and not worth complicating the kernel code for. This is not
> about making it functional, only about perf.
>