Re: Intel P6 vs P7 system call performance

Pavel Machek
2002-12-19T22:08:09Z

Hi!

> > (Modulo the missing syscall page I already mentioned and potential bugs
> > in the code itself, of course ;)
>
> Ok, I did the vsyscall page too, and tried to make it do the right thing
> (but I didn't bother to test it on a non-SEP machine).
>
> I'm pushing the changes out right now, but basically it boils down to the
> fact that with these changes, user space can instead of doing an
>
> int $0x80
>
> instruction for a system call just do a
>
> call 0xfffff000
>
> instead. The vsyscall page will be set up to use sysenter if the CPU
> supports it, and if it doesn't, it will just do the old "int $0x80"
> instead (and it could use the AMD syscall instruction if it wants to).
> User mode shouldn't know or care, the calling convention is the same as it
> ever was.

Perhaps it makes sense to define that gettimeofday is done by

call 0xfffff100,

NOW? So we can add vsyscalls later?
Pavel
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