Re: [PATCH] Introduce jiffies_32 and related compare functions

Eric Dumazet
2006-12-12T03:47:05Z

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David Miller a écrit :
> From: Eric Dumazet <dada1@cosmosbay.com>
> Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2006 23:58:06 +0100
>
>> Some subsystems dont need more than 32bits timestamps.
>>
>> See for example net/ipv4/inetpeer.c and include/net/tcp.h :
>> #define tcp_time_stamp ((__u32)(jiffies))
>>
>>
>> Because most timeouts should work with 'normal jiffies' that are 32bits on
>> 32bits platforms, it makes sense to be able to use only 32bits to store them
>> and not 64 bits, to save ram.
>>
>> This patch introduces jiffies_32, and related comparison functions
>> time_after32(), time_before32(), time_after_eq32() and time_before_eq32().
>>
>> I plan to use this infrastructure in network code for example (struct
>> dst_entry comes to mind).
>
> The TCP case is because the protocol limits the size of
> the timestamp we can store in the TCP Timestamp option.
>
> Otherwise we would use the full 64-bit jiffies timestamp,
> in order to have a larger window of values which would not
> overflow.
>
> Since there is no protocol limitation involved in cases
> such as dst_entry, I think we should keep it at 64-bits
> on 64-bit platforms to make the wrap-around window as
> large as possible.
>
> I really don't see any reason to make these changes. Yes,
> you'd save some space, but one of the chief advantages of
> 64-bit is that we get larger jiffies value windows. If
> that has zero value, as your intended changes imply, then
> we shouldn't need the default 64-bit jiffies either, by
> implication.

Well, just to have similar functions to manipulate jiffies.

We already know that using a 32bits dtime in struct inet_peer permited an
object size of 64 bytes instead of 128 bytes (on 64bits platforms)

On one machine (running linux-2.6.16) I have :

# grep peer /proc/slabinfo
inet_peer_cache 65972 86220 128 30 1 : tunables 120 60 8 :
slabdata 2874 2874 262

(So the 128 bytes -> 64 bytes is going to save 1437 pages of memory)

# grep dst /proc/slabinfo
ip_dst_cache 1765818 2077380 320 12 1 : tunables 54 27 8 :
slabdata 173115 173115 39

(So saving 4*4 bytes per dst might save 32 MB of ram).
I doubt being able to extend the expiration of a dst above 2^32 ticks (49 days
if HZ=1000, 198 days if HZ=250) is worth the ram wastage.

Dont you prefer to be able to apply this patch for example ?

Signed-off-by: Eric Dumazet <dada1@cosmosbay.com>

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--- linux/net/ipv4/inetpeer.c.orig 2006-12-12 05:25:42.000000000 +0100
+++ linux-ed/net/ipv4/inetpeer.c 2006-12-12 05:29:22.000000000 +0100
@@ -338,8 +338,7 @@ static int cleanup_once(unsigned long tt
spin_lock_bh(&inet_peer_unused_lock);
p = inet_peer_unused_head;
if (p != NULL) {
- __u32 delta = (__u32)jiffies - p->dtime;
- if (delta < ttl) {
+ if (time_after32(p->dtime + ttl, jiffies_32)) {
/* Do not prune fresh entries. */
spin_unlock_bh(&inet_peer_unused_lock);
return -1;
@@ -466,7 +465,7 @@ void inet_putpeer(struct inet_peer *p)
p->unused_next = NULL;
*inet_peer_unused_tailp = p;
inet_peer_unused_tailp = &p->unused_next;
- p->dtime = (__u32)jiffies;
+ p->dtime = jiffies_32;
}
spin_unlock_bh(&inet_peer_unused_lock);
}