Re: Large stack usage in fs code (especially for PPC64)

Paul Mackerras
2008-11-18T01:05:42Z

Steve,

> On Mon, 17 Nov 2008, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> >
> > I do wonder just _what_ it is that causes the stack frames to be so
> > horrid. For example, you have
> >
> > 18) 8896 160 .kmem_cache_alloc+0xfc/0x140
> >
> > and I'm looking at my x86-64 compile, and it has a stack frame of just 8
> > bytes (!) for local variables plus the save/restore area (which looks like
> > three registers plus frame pointer plus return address). IOW, if I'm
> > looking at the code right (so big caveat: I did _not_ do a real stack
> > dump!) the x86-64 stack cost for that same function is on the order of 48
> > bytes. Not 160.
>
> Out of curiosity, I just ran stack_trace on the latest version of git
> (pulled sometime today) and ran it on my x86_64.
>
> I have SLUB and SLUB debug defined, and here's what I found:
>
> 11) 3592 64 kmem_cache_alloc+0x64/0xa3
>
> 64 bytes, still much lower than the 160 of PPC64.

The ppc64 ABI has a minimum stack frame of 112 bytes, due to having an
area for called functions to store their parameters (64 bytes) plus 6
slots for saving stuff and for the compiler and linker to use if they
need to. That's before any local variables are allocated.

The ppc32 ABI has a minimum stack frame of 16 bytes, which is much
nicer, at the expense of a much more complicated va_arg().

Paul.