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From: Andi Kleen <ak@suse.de>
To: "Bela Lubkin" <blubkin@vmware.com>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, mingo@elte.hu
Subject: Re: touch_cache() only touches two thirds
Date: 10 Nov 2006 09:25:51 +0100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <p734pt7k8s0.fsf@bingen.suse.de> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <FE74AC4E0A23124DA52B99F17F441597DA118C@PA-EXCH03.vmware.com>

"Bela Lubkin" <blubkin@vmware.com> writes:
> 
> /*
>  * Dirty a big buffer in a hard-to-predict (for the L2 cache) way. This
>  * is the operation that is timed, so we try to generate unpredictable
>  * cachemisses that still end up filling the L2 cache:
>  */

The comment is misleading anyways. AFAIK several of the modern
CPUs (at least K8, later P4s, Core2, POWER4+, PPC970) have prefetch 
predictors advanced enough to follow several streams forward and backwards
in parallel.

I hit this while doing NUMA benchmarking for example.

Most likely to be really unpredictable you need to use a
true RND and somehow make sure still the full cache range 
is covered.


-Andi

  reply	other threads:[~2006-11-10  8:26 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 7+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2006-11-09  0:56 touch_cache() only touches two thirds Bela Lubkin
2006-11-10  8:25 ` Andi Kleen [this message]
2006-11-11  0:12   ` Bela Lubkin
2006-11-11  0:23     ` Andi Kleen
2006-11-11  1:48       ` Bela Lubkin
2006-11-18  4:18     ` dean gaudet
2006-11-18  4:31       ` dean gaudet

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