[PATCH] x86: Use -m-omit-leaf-frame-pointer to shrink text size

[PATCH] x86: Use -m-omit-leaf-frame-pointer to shrink text size

[Ingo Molnar]

This patch turns on -momit-leaf-frame-pointer on x86 builds and 
thus shrinks .text noticeably. On a defconfig-ish kernel:

   text	   data	    bss	    dec	    hex	filename
   9843902	1935808	3649536	15429246	 eb6e7e	vmlinux.before
   9813764	1935792	3649536	15399092	 eaf8b4	vmlinux.after

That's 0.3% off text size.

The actual win is larger than this percentage suggests: many 
small, hot helper functions such as find_next_bit(), 
do_raw_spin_lock() or most of the list_*() functions are leaf 
functions and are now shorter by 2 instructions.

Probably a good chunk of the framepointers related runtime 
overhead on common workloads is eliminated via this patch, as 
small leaf functions execute more often than larger parent 
functions.

The call-chains are still intact for quality backtraces and for 
call-chain profiling (perf record -g), as the backtrace walker 
can deduct the full backtrace from the RIP of a leaf function 
and the parent chain.

Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
---
 arch/x86/Makefile |    8 ++++++++
 1 file changed, 8 insertions(+)

Index: linux/arch/x86/Makefile
===================================================================
--- linux.orig/arch/x86/Makefile
+++ linux/arch/x86/Makefile
@@ -72,6 +72,14 @@ else
         KBUILD_CFLAGS += -maccumulate-outgoing-args
 endif
 
+#
+# This shrinks many small functions, we don't actually
+# need their frame pointer, in backtraces the RIP will
+# identify the function and the stack frame walker will
+# find the parent function:
+#
+KBUILD_CFLAGS += $(call cc-option,-momit-leaf-frame-pointer)
+
 ifdef CONFIG_CC_STACKPROTECTOR
 	cc_has_sp := $(srctree)/scripts/gcc-x86_$(BITS)-has-stack-protector.sh
         ifeq ($(shell $(CONFIG_SHELL) $(cc_has_sp) $(CC) $(KBUILD_CPPFLAGS) $(biarch)),y)

Re: [PATCH] x86: Use -m-omit-leaf-frame-pointer to shrink text size

[Andrew Morton]

On Fri, 16 Dec 2011 09:19:16 +0100 Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> wrote:

> 
> This patch turns on -momit-leaf-frame-pointer on x86 builds and 
> thus shrinks .text noticeably. On a defconfig-ish kernel:
> 
>    text	   data	    bss	    dec	    hex	filename
>    9843902	1935808	3649536	15429246	 eb6e7e	vmlinux.before
>    9813764	1935792	3649536	15399092	 eaf8b4	vmlinux.after
> 
> That's 0.3% off text size.
> 
> The actual win is larger than this percentage suggests: many 
> small, hot helper functions such as find_next_bit(), 
> do_raw_spin_lock() or most of the list_*() functions are leaf 
> functions and are now shorter by 2 instructions.
> 
> Probably a good chunk of the framepointers related runtime 
> overhead on common workloads is eliminated via this patch, as 
> small leaf functions execute more often than larger parent 
> functions.
> 
> The call-chains are still intact for quality backtraces and for 
> call-chain profiling (perf record -g), as the backtrace walker 
> can deduct the full backtrace from the RIP of a leaf function 
> and the parent chain.

The only problem I can think of (apart from tickling gcc bugs) is that
it might break __builtin_return_address(n) for n>0 with frame pointers
enabled?  The only code I can find which does this is
drivers/isdn/hardware/mISDN/ and ftrace.

Re: [PATCH] x86: Use -m-omit-leaf-frame-pointer to shrink text size

[Ingo Molnar]

* Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> wrote:

> On Fri, 16 Dec 2011 09:19:16 +0100 Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> wrote:
> 
> > 
> > This patch turns on -momit-leaf-frame-pointer on x86 builds and 
> > thus shrinks .text noticeably. On a defconfig-ish kernel:
> > 
> >    text	   data	    bss	    dec	    hex	filename
> >    9843902	1935808	3649536	15429246	 eb6e7e	vmlinux.before
> >    9813764	1935792	3649536	15399092	 eaf8b4	vmlinux.after
> > 
> > That's 0.3% off text size.
> > 
> > The actual win is larger than this percentage suggests: many 
> > small, hot helper functions such as find_next_bit(), 
> > do_raw_spin_lock() or most of the list_*() functions are leaf 
> > functions and are now shorter by 2 instructions.
> > 
> > Probably a good chunk of the framepointers related runtime 
> > overhead on common workloads is eliminated via this patch, as 
> > small leaf functions execute more often than larger parent 
> > functions.
> > 
> > The call-chains are still intact for quality backtraces and for 
> > call-chain profiling (perf record -g), as the backtrace walker 
> > can deduct the full backtrace from the RIP of a leaf function 
> > and the parent chain.
> 
> The only problem I can think of (apart from tickling gcc bugs) is that
> it might break __builtin_return_address(n) for n>0 with frame pointers
> enabled?  The only code I can find which does this is
> drivers/isdn/hardware/mISDN/ and ftrace.

Well, AFAICS it won't really 'break' it but behave as if the 
leaf function got inlined into the parent function. I think we 
can live with that.

Thanks,

	Ingo

Re: [PATCH] x86: Use -m-omit-leaf-frame-pointer to shrink text size

[Ingo Molnar]

* Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> wrote:

> [...]
> 
> The call-chains are still intact for quality backtraces and 
> for call-chain profiling (perf record -g), as the backtrace 
> walker can deduct the full backtrace from the RIP of a leaf 
> function and the parent chain.

Hm, noticed one complication while looking at annotated assembly 
code in perf top. Code doing function calls from within asm() is 
incorrectly marked 'leaf' by GCC:

ffffffff812b82d8 <arch_local_save_flags>:
ffffffff812b82d8:       ff 14 25 00 d9 c1 81    callq  *0xffffffff81c1d900
ffffffff812b82df:       c3                      retq   

So all the paravirt details will have to be fixed, so that GCC 
is able to see that there's a real function call done inside. 
Jeremy, Konrad?

Thanks,

	Ingo

Re: [PATCH] x86: Use -m-omit-leaf-frame-pointer to shrink text size

[Jeremy Fitzhardinge]

On 12/16/2011 12:53 AM, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> * Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> wrote:
>
>> [...]
>>
>> The call-chains are still intact for quality backtraces and 
>> for call-chain profiling (perf record -g), as the backtrace 
>> walker can deduct the full backtrace from the RIP of a leaf 
>> function and the parent chain.
> Hm, noticed one complication while looking at annotated assembly 
> code in perf top. Code doing function calls from within asm() is 
> incorrectly marked 'leaf' by GCC:
>
> ffffffff812b82d8 <arch_local_save_flags>:
> ffffffff812b82d8:       ff 14 25 00 d9 c1 81    callq  *0xffffffff81c1d900
> ffffffff812b82df:       c3                      retq   
>
> So all the paravirt details will have to be fixed, so that GCC 
> is able to see that there's a real function call done inside. 
> Jeremy, Konrad?

Um.  So the issue is that a function that contains only pvops looks like
it's a leaf to gcc and it does some leaf-function optimisation?

How can we tell gcc the asm contains a call, or otherwise suppress the
"leaf function" classification?

The alternative is to just make it a plain C-level indirect call, but
then we'd lose all the patching and callee-save optimisations.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
    J

Re: [PATCH] x86: Use -m-omit-leaf-frame-pointer to shrink text size

[Peter Zijlstra]

On Fri, 2011-12-16 at 01:23 -0800, Jeremy Fitzhardinge wrote:
> On 12/16/2011 12:53 AM, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> > * Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> wrote:
> >
> >> [...]
> >>
> >> The call-chains are still intact for quality backtraces and 
> >> for call-chain profiling (perf record -g), as the backtrace 
> >> walker can deduct the full backtrace from the RIP of a leaf 
> >> function and the parent chain.
> > Hm, noticed one complication while looking at annotated assembly 
> > code in perf top. Code doing function calls from within asm() is 
> > incorrectly marked 'leaf' by GCC:
> >
> > ffffffff812b82d8 <arch_local_save_flags>:
> > ffffffff812b82d8:       ff 14 25 00 d9 c1 81    callq  *0xffffffff81c1d900
> > ffffffff812b82df:       c3                      retq   
> >
> > So all the paravirt details will have to be fixed, so that GCC 
> > is able to see that there's a real function call done inside. 
> > Jeremy, Konrad?
> 
> Um.  So the issue is that a function that contains only pvops looks like
> it's a leaf to gcc and it does some leaf-function optimisation?
> 
> How can we tell gcc the asm contains a call, or otherwise suppress the
> "leaf function" classification?
> 
> The alternative is to just make it a plain C-level indirect call, but
> then we'd lose all the patching and callee-save optimisations.
> 
> Any suggestions?

Added Richard Henderson to CC.

I only found the function __attribute__((leaf)) to explicitly mark a
function as being a leaf function, but the documentation doesn't list
the inverse of that to explicitly mark it as _not_ being one.

I haven't done a git grep on the gcc sources yet since I seem to have
misplaced my gcc.git tree.

Re: [PATCH] x86: Use -m-omit-leaf-frame-pointer to shrink text size

[Richard Henderson]

On 12/16/2011 02:20 AM, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
>> How can we tell gcc the asm contains a call, or otherwise suppress the
>> "leaf function" classification?

You can't at present.

> I only found the function __attribute__((leaf)) to explicitly mark a
> function as being a leaf function, but the documentation doesn't list
> the inverse of that to explicitly mark it as _not_ being one.

In any case, "leaf" doesn't do what you think it does -- see the docs.
I told Honza at the time that he was overloading existing terminology
without  purpose, but no one came up with a better name before the
release, so it stayed that way.  AFAIK, no one uses it because no one
understands it.

Do you have a proposal for what you'd like the extension to look like?
The only thing that comes to mind atm is "call" in the clobber section.
This is not likely to get written before gcc 4.8 though...


r~

Re: [PATCH] x86: Use -m-omit-leaf-frame-pointer to shrink text size

[Jan Beulich]

>>> On 16.12.11 at 10:23, Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy@goop.org> wrote:
> On 12/16/2011 12:53 AM, Ingo Molnar wrote:
>> * Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> wrote:
>>
>>> [...]
>>>
>>> The call-chains are still intact for quality backtraces and 
>>> for call-chain profiling (perf record -g), as the backtrace 
>>> walker can deduct the full backtrace from the RIP of a leaf 
>>> function and the parent chain.

Are you sure about that even if the leaf function uses rBP for a
different purpose?

>> Hm, noticed one complication while looking at annotated assembly 
>> code in perf top. Code doing function calls from within asm() is 
>> incorrectly marked 'leaf' by GCC:
>>
>> ffffffff812b82d8 <arch_local_save_flags>:
>> ffffffff812b82d8:       ff 14 25 00 d9 c1 81    callq  *0xffffffff81c1d900
>> ffffffff812b82df:       c3                      retq   
>>
>> So all the paravirt details will have to be fixed, so that GCC 
>> is able to see that there's a real function call done inside. 
>> Jeremy, Konrad?

If the above is not a problem, wouldn't this simply result in a skipped
function layer?

Also, iirc it's not just pv-ops that uses calls within asm()-s.

> Um.  So the issue is that a function that contains only pvops looks like
> it's a leaf to gcc and it does some leaf-function optimisation?
> 
> How can we tell gcc the asm contains a call, or otherwise suppress the
> "leaf function" classification?

I'm afraid you can't without adding code (i.e. a dummy function call).

Jan

Re: [PATCH] x86: Use -m-omit-leaf-frame-pointer to shrink text size

[Ingo Molnar]

* Jan Beulich <JBeulich@suse.com> wrote:

> >>> On 16.12.11 at 10:23, Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy@goop.org> wrote:
> > On 12/16/2011 12:53 AM, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> >> * Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> wrote:
> >>
> >>> [...]
> >>>
> >>> The call-chains are still intact for quality backtraces 
> >>> and for call-chain profiling (perf record -g), as the 
> >>> backtrace walker can deduct the full backtrace from the 
> >>> RIP of a leaf function and the parent chain.
> 
> Are you sure about that even if the leaf function uses rBP for 
> a different purpose?

Well, i assumed that GCC does not mess with %bp in leaf 
functions - a frame pointer is barely useful if it's destroyed 
spuriously in leaf functions.

A quick grep of the assembly appears to support that assumption:

 $ objdump -d vmlinux | grep ',%rbp$' | cut -d: -f2- | sort | uniq -c | sort -n | tail -10

      3 	48 89 d5             	mov    %rdx,%rbp
      3 	4c 89 cd             	mov    %r9,%rbp
      4 	48 0f 45 e8          	cmovne %rax,%rbp
      4 	48 83 cd ff          	or     $0xffffffffffffffff,%rbp
      5 	4c 89 dd             	mov    %r11,%rbp
      7 	48 21 fd             	and    %rdi,%rbp
     10 	48 d3 e5             	shl    %cl,%rbp
     14 	48 85 ed             	test   %rbp,%rbp
     14 	48 8b 6c 24 20       	mov    0x20(%rsp),%rbp
  31042 	48 89 e5             	mov    %rsp,%rbp

%rbp is not touched, except in a few special assembly glue/entry 
pieces of code.

> >> Hm, noticed one complication while looking at annotated 
> >> assembly code in perf top. Code doing function calls from 
> >> within asm() is incorrectly marked 'leaf' by GCC:
> >>
> >> ffffffff812b82d8 <arch_local_save_flags>:
> >> ffffffff812b82d8:       ff 14 25 00 d9 c1 81    callq  *0xffffffff81c1d900
> >> ffffffff812b82df:       c3                      retq   
> >>
> >> So all the paravirt details will have to be fixed, so that 
> >> GCC is able to see that there's a real function call done 
> >> inside. Jeremy, Konrad?
> 
> If the above is not a problem, wouldn't this simply result in 
> a skipped function layer?

Yeah - i guess we can live with that, as long as the frame 
pointer chain is otherwise usable and walkable.

Thanks,

	Ingo

Re: [PATCH] x86: Use -m-omit-leaf-frame-pointer to shrink text size

[H. Peter Anvin]

On 12/16/2011 04:00 AM, Ingo Molnar wrote:
>>
>> Are you sure about that even if the leaf function uses rBP for 
>> a different purpose?
> 
> Well, i assumed that GCC does not mess with %bp in leaf 
> functions - a frame pointer is barely useful if it's destroyed 
> spuriously in leaf functions.
> 

We should verify that explicitly.  gcc has every "right" to treat it as
a normal callee-saved register, but I think it is a very low priority
register in gcc's register allocation scheme.

	-hpa

-- 
H. Peter Anvin, Intel Open Source Technology Center
I work for Intel.  I don't speak on their behalf.

Re: [PATCH] x86: Use -m-omit-leaf-frame-pointer to shrink text size

[Frederic Weisbecker]

On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 09:19:16AM +0100, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> 
> This patch turns on -momit-leaf-frame-pointer on x86 builds and 
> thus shrinks .text noticeably. On a defconfig-ish kernel:
> 
>    text	   data	    bss	    dec	    hex	filename
>    9843902	1935808	3649536	15429246	 eb6e7e	vmlinux.before
>    9813764	1935792	3649536	15399092	 eaf8b4	vmlinux.after
> 
> That's 0.3% off text size.
> 
> The actual win is larger than this percentage suggests: many 
> small, hot helper functions such as find_next_bit(), 
> do_raw_spin_lock() or most of the list_*() functions are leaf 
> functions and are now shorter by 2 instructions.
> 
> Probably a good chunk of the framepointers related runtime 
> overhead on common workloads is eliminated via this patch, as 
> small leaf functions execute more often than larger parent 
> functions.
> 
> The call-chains are still intact for quality backtraces and for 
> call-chain profiling (perf record -g), as the backtrace walker 
> can deduct the full backtrace from the RIP of a leaf function 
> and the parent chain.

Probably not actually. We are going to miss the parent of those
leaf functions all the time in the stacktrace.

Consider an irq interrupting the following chain:

spin_lock() -> raw_spin_lock() -> do_raw_spin_lock()

And we do a stacktrace on top of the interrupted regs.

What we we do typically is to include the regs->ip as a first entry
(like in perf) or we make it obvious in a bug stacktrace. Then we
purely walk through regs->bp (perf) or we walk the stack and validate
with regs->bp (bug stacktraces)

If do_raw_spin_lock() is a leaf function, we have the following happening:

1) dump regs->ip = do_raw_spin_lock()
2) then use regs->bp to find the return address, but bp
has been saved in the parent, the return address is the one of the parent,
which is = spin_lock() and not raw_spin_lock()

We are more lucky with the paranoid stack walking made for bug reports
because we at least find the return address somehow of do_raw_spin_lock()
but it will appear with the "?" because it won't be validated by the frame
pointer.

I'm not sure we can work around that, unless we can find fast ways
to identify which functions are concerned by this ripped frame pointer
while we are unwinding, in which case we can use some black magic. And
still, we can do something reliable only if we ensure the leaf function has
no stackframe (otherwise we can't reliably find its return address).

> 
> Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
> ---
>  arch/x86/Makefile |    8 ++++++++
>  1 file changed, 8 insertions(+)
> 
> Index: linux/arch/x86/Makefile
> ===================================================================
> --- linux.orig/arch/x86/Makefile
> +++ linux/arch/x86/Makefile
> @@ -72,6 +72,14 @@ else
>          KBUILD_CFLAGS += -maccumulate-outgoing-args
>  endif
>  
> +#
> +# This shrinks many small functions, we don't actually
> +# need their frame pointer, in backtraces the RIP will
> +# identify the function and the stack frame walker will
> +# find the parent function:
> +#
> +KBUILD_CFLAGS += $(call cc-option,-momit-leaf-frame-pointer)
> +
>  ifdef CONFIG_CC_STACKPROTECTOR
>  	cc_has_sp := $(srctree)/scripts/gcc-x86_$(BITS)-has-stack-protector.sh
>          ifeq ($(shell $(CONFIG_SHELL) $(cc_has_sp) $(CC) $(KBUILD_CPPFLAGS) $(biarch)),y)

Re: [PATCH] x86: Use -m-omit-leaf-frame-pointer to shrink text size

[Frederic Weisbecker]

On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 09:19:16AM +0100, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> 
> This patch turns on -momit-leaf-frame-pointer on x86 builds and 
> thus shrinks .text noticeably. On a defconfig-ish kernel:
> 
>    text	   data	    bss	    dec	    hex	filename
>    9843902	1935808	3649536	15429246	 eb6e7e	vmlinux.before
>    9813764	1935792	3649536	15399092	 eaf8b4	vmlinux.after
> 
> That's 0.3% off text size.
> 
> The actual win is larger than this percentage suggests: many 
> small, hot helper functions such as find_next_bit(), 
> do_raw_spin_lock() or most of the list_*() functions are leaf 
> functions and are now shorter by 2 instructions.
> 
> Probably a good chunk of the framepointers related runtime 
> overhead on common workloads is eliminated via this patch, as 
> small leaf functions execute more often than larger parent 
> functions.
> 
> The call-chains are still intact for quality backtraces and for 
> call-chain profiling (perf record -g), as the backtrace walker 
> can deduct the full backtrace from the RIP of a leaf function 
> and the parent chain.

In the case of linked stacks (like frame pointer linking interrupt
to exception stack) we may also miss a leaf function (and not its parent).

Now perhaps we can live with all that, I don't know.

> 
> Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
> ---
>  arch/x86/Makefile |    8 ++++++++
>  1 file changed, 8 insertions(+)
> 
> Index: linux/arch/x86/Makefile
> ===================================================================
> --- linux.orig/arch/x86/Makefile
> +++ linux/arch/x86/Makefile
> @@ -72,6 +72,14 @@ else
>          KBUILD_CFLAGS += -maccumulate-outgoing-args
>  endif
>  
> +#
> +# This shrinks many small functions, we don't actually
> +# need their frame pointer, in backtraces the RIP will
> +# identify the function and the stack frame walker will
> +# find the parent function:
> +#
> +KBUILD_CFLAGS += $(call cc-option,-momit-leaf-frame-pointer)
> +
>  ifdef CONFIG_CC_STACKPROTECTOR
>  	cc_has_sp := $(srctree)/scripts/gcc-x86_$(BITS)-has-stack-protector.sh
>          ifeq ($(shell $(CONFIG_SHELL) $(cc_has_sp) $(CC) $(KBUILD_CPPFLAGS) $(biarch)),y)