Re: [PATCH 2/4] generic-smp: remove kmalloc usage

Peter Zijlstra
2009-02-19T09:11:42Z

On Thu, 2009-02-19 at 15:01 +1030, Rusty Russell wrote:
> On Thursday 19 February 2009 02:35:35 Ingo Molnar wrote:
> >
> > * Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp.com.au> wrote:
> >
> > > On Tuesday 17 February 2009 20:13:59 Ingo Molnar wrote:
> > > > We should not bend backwards trying to preserve that kmalloc()
> > > > [and prove that it's safe and race-free] - i.e. the burden of
> > > > proof is on the person insisting that it's needed, not on the
> > > > person wanting to remove it.
> > >
> > > Respectfully disagree. The kmalloc has been there for a very long time,
> > > and doing fine AFAICT.
> >
> > The kmalloc(GFP_ATOMIC) has been in kernel/smp.c for about half
> > a year
>
> Oops, yes.
>
> So if we care about the kmalloc, why didn't we see benchmarks when we
> switched from the x86 smp_call_function_mask to the generic one? Or did
> I just miss them (there's nothing in the git commit).
>
> Now, I think the current patch is quite neat and may not been benchmarks to
> justify it, but it'd still be nice if it were faster, but noone seems to know.

I think the problem is that even on a lively machine these routines just
aren't called that often:

CAL: 74 104 93 116 Function call interrupts
make clean; make -j8 bzImage
CAL: 74 104 93 116 Function call interrupts

We could of course construct some artificial ubench to stress it...