Re: [PATCH 07/32] mm: Bring back vmalloc_exec

Kent Overstreet
2023-05-13T19:28:31Z

On Fri, May 12, 2023 at 06:57:52PM -0700, Eric Biggers wrote:
> What I would suggest instead is preprocessing the list of 6 field lengths to
> create some information that can be used to extract all 6 fields branchlessly
> with no dependencies between different fields. (And you clearly *can* add a
> preprocessing step, as you already have one -- the dynamic code generator.)
>
> So, something like the following:
>
> const struct field_info *info = &format->fields[0];
>
> field0 = (in->u64s[info->word_idx] >> info->shift1) & info->mask;
> field0 |= in->u64s[info->word_idx - 1] >> info->shift2;
>
> ... but with the code for all 6 fields interleaved.
>
> On modern CPUs, I think that would be faster than your current C code.
>
> You could do better by creating variants that are specialized for specific
> common sets of parameters. During "preprocessing", you would select a variant
> and set an enum accordingly. During decoding, you would switch on that enum and
> call the appropriate variant. (This could also be done with a function pointer,
> of course, but indirect calls are slow these days...)
>
> For example, you mentioned that 8-byte packed keys is a common case. In that
> case there is only a single u64 to decode from, so you could create a function
> that just handles that case:
>
> field0 = (word >> info->shift) & info->mask;
>
> You could also create other variants, e.g.:
>
> - 16-byte packed keys (which you mentioned are common)
> - Some specific set of fields have zero width so don't need to be extracted
> (which it sounds like is common, or is it different fields each time?)
> - All fields having specific lengths (are there any particularly common cases?)
>
> Have you considered any of these ideas?

I like that idea.

Gonna hack some code... :)