Re: [PATCH] xarray: inline xas_descend to improve performance

[Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>]

On Mon, 15 Apr 2024 09:21:36 +0800 Long Li <leo.lilong@huawei.com> wrote:

> The commit 63b1898fffcd ("XArray: Disallow sibling entries of nodes")
> modified the xas_descend function in such a way that it was no longer
> being compiled as an inline function, because it increased the size of
> xas_descend(), and the compiler no longer optimizes it as inline. This
> had a negative impact on performance, xas_descend is called frequently
> to traverse downwards in the xarray tree, making it a hot function.
> 
> Inlining xas_descend has been shown to significantly improve performance
> by approximately 4.95% in the iozone write test.
> 
>   Machine: Intel(R) Xeon(R) Gold 6240 CPU @ 2.60GHz
>   #iozone i 0 -i 1 -s 64g -r 16m -f /test/tmptest
> 
> Before this patch:
> 
>        kB    reclen    write   rewrite     read    reread
>  67108864     16384  2230080   3637689 6 315197   5496027
> 
> After this patch:
> 
>        kB    reclen    write   rewrite     read    reread
>  67108864     16384  2340360   3666175  6272401   5460782
> 
> Percentage change:
>                        4.95%     0.78%   -0.68%    -0.64%
> 
> This patch introduces inlining to the xas_descend function. While this
> change increases the size of lib/xarray.o, the performance gains in
> critical workloads make this an acceptable trade-off.
> 
> Size comparison before and after patch:
> .text		.data		.bss		file
> 0x3502		    0		   0		lib/xarray.o.before
> 0x3602		    0		   0		lib/xarray.o.after
> 
> ...
>
> --- a/lib/xarray.c
> +++ b/lib/xarray.c
> @@ -200,7 +200,7 @@ static void *xas_start(struct xa_state *xas)
>  	return entry;
>  }
>  
> -static void *xas_descend(struct xa_state *xas, struct xa_node *node)
> +static inline void *xas_descend(struct xa_state *xas, struct xa_node *node)
>  {
>  	unsigned int offset = get_offset(xas->xa_index, node);
>  	void *entry = xa_entry(xas->xa, node, offset);

I thought gcc nowadays treats `inline' as avisory and still makes up
its own mind?

Perhaps we should use __always_inline here?