Re: [RFC 4/9] Atomic reclaim: Save irq flags in vmscan.c

Christoph Lameter
2007-08-14T22:23:12Z

On Wed, 15 Aug 2007, Andi Kleen wrote:

> > > The interrupt handler shouldn't touch zone_flag. If it wants
> > > to it would need to be converted to a local_t and incremented/decremented
> > > (should be about the same cost at least on architectures with sane
> > > local_t implementation)
> >
> > That would mean we need to fork the code for reclaim?
>
> Not with the local_t increment.

Ok I have a vague idea on how this could but its likely that the
changes make things worse rather than better. Additional reference to a
new cacheline (per cpu but still), preempt disable. Lots of code at all
call sites. Interrupt enable/disable is quite efficient in recent
processors.