[PATCH v2 18/26] selftests/resctrl: Read in less obvious order to defeat prefetch optimizations

Ilpo Järvinen
2023-11-20T11:17:39Z

When reading memory in order, HW prefetching optimizations will
interfere with measuring how caches and memory are being accessed. This
adds noise into the results.

Change the fill_buf reading loop to not use an obvious in-order access
using multiply by a prime and modulo.

Using a prime multiplier with modulo ensures the entire buffer is
eventually read. 23 is small enough that the reads are spread out but
wrapping does not occur very frequently (wrapping too often can trigger
L2 hits more frequently which causes noise to the test because getting
the data from LLC is not required).

It was discovered that not all primes work equally well and some can
cause wildly unstable results (e.g., in an earlier version of this
patch, the reads were done in reversed order and 59 was used as the
prime resulting in unacceptably high and unstable results in MBA and
MBM test on some architectures).

Link: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-kselftest/TYAPR01MB6330025B5E6537F94DA49ACB8B499@TYAPR01MB6330.jpnprd01.prod.outlook.com/
Signed-off-by: Ilpo Järvinen <ilpo.jarvinen@linux.intel.com>
---
tools/testing/selftests/resctrl/fill_buf.c | 38 +++++++++++++++++-----
1 file changed, 30 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-)

diff --git a/tools/testing/selftests/resctrl/fill_buf.c b/tools/testing/selftests/resctrl/fill_buf.c
index 8fe9574db9d8..93a3d408339c 100644
--- a/tools/testing/selftests/resctrl/fill_buf.c
+++ b/tools/testing/selftests/resctrl/fill_buf.c
@@ -51,16 +51,38 @@ static void mem_flush(unsigned char *buf, size_t buf_size)
sb();
}

+/*
+ * Buffer index step advance to workaround HW prefetching interfering with
+ * the measurements.
+ *
+ * Must be a prime to step through all indexes of the buffer.
+ *
+ * Some primes work better than others on some architectures (from MBA/MBM
+ * result stability point of view).
+ */
+#define FILL_IDX_MULT 23
+
static int fill_one_span_read(unsigned char *buf, size_t buf_size)
{
- unsigned char *end_ptr = buf + buf_size;
- unsigned char sum, *p;
-
- sum = 0;
- p = buf;
- while (p < end_ptr) {
- sum += *p;
- p += (CL_SIZE / 2);
+ unsigned int size = buf_size / (CL_SIZE / 2);
+ unsigned int i, idx = 0;
+ unsigned char sum = 0;
+
+ /*
+ * Read the buffer in an order that is unexpected by HW prefetching
+ * optimizations to prevent them interfering with the caching pattern.
+ *
+ * The read order is (in terms of halves of cachelines):
+ * i * FILL_IDX_MULT % size
+ * The formula is open-coded below to avoiding modulo inside the loop
+ * as it improves MBA/MBM result stability on some architectures.
+ */
+ for (i = 0; i < size; i++) {
+ sum += buf[idx * (CL_SIZE / 2)];
+
+ idx += FILL_IDX_MULT;
+ while (idx >= size)
+ idx -= size;
}

return sum;
--
2.30.2