diff options
| author | Palmer Dabbelt | 2023-09-08 11:24:12 -0700 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Palmer Dabbelt | 2023-09-08 11:24:12 -0700 |
| commit | 580253b518e6be80b1ecc5e418068388fd4dd4d5 (patch) | |
| tree | 45f114b61f09ed5bab01e486723f95646fbe7256 /Documentation | |
| parent | e0152e7481c6c63764d6ea8ee41af5cf9dfac5e9 (diff) | |
| parent | f2d14bc4e437b8ed21e6890ae047a6ec47c030d9 (diff) | |
Merge patch series "RISC-V: Probe for misaligned access speed"
Evan Green <evan@rivosinc.com> says:
The current setting for the hwprobe bit indicating misaligned access
speed is controlled by a vendor-specific feature probe function. This is
essentially a per-SoC table we have to maintain on behalf of each vendor
going forward. Let's convert that instead to something we detect at
runtime.
We have two assembly routines at the heart of our probe: one that
does a bunch of word-sized accesses (without aligning its input buffer),
and the other that does byte accesses. If we can move a larger number of
bytes using misaligned word accesses than we can with the same amount of
time doing byte accesses, then we can declare misaligned accesses as
"fast".
The tradeoff of reducing this maintenance burden is boot time. We spend
4-6 jiffies per core doing this measurement (0-2 on jiffie edge
alignment, and 4 on measurement). The timing loop was based on
raid6_choose_gen(), which uses (16+1)*N jiffies (where N is the number
of algorithms). By taking only the fastest iteration out of all
attempts for use in the comparison, variance between runs is very low.
On my THead C906, it looks like this:
[ 0.047563] cpu0: Ratio of byte access time to unaligned word access is 4.34, unaligned accesses are fast
Several others have chimed in with results on slow machines with the
older algorithm, which took all runs into account, including noise like
interrupts. Even with this variation, results indicate that in all cases
(fast, slow, and emulated) the measured numbers are nowhere near each
other (always multiple factors away).
* b4-shazam-merge:
RISC-V: alternative: Remove feature_probe_func
RISC-V: Probe for unaligned access speed
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20230818194136.4084400-1-evan@rivosinc.com
Signed-off-by: Palmer Dabbelt <palmer@rivosinc.com>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/riscv/hwprobe.rst | 11 |
1 files changed, 5 insertions, 6 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/riscv/hwprobe.rst b/Documentation/riscv/hwprobe.rst index 20eff9650da9..a52996b22f75 100644 --- a/Documentation/riscv/hwprobe.rst +++ b/Documentation/riscv/hwprobe.rst @@ -87,13 +87,12 @@ The following keys are defined: emulated via software, either in or below the kernel. These accesses are always extremely slow. - * :c:macro:`RISCV_HWPROBE_MISALIGNED_SLOW`: Misaligned accesses are supported - in hardware, but are slower than the corresponding aligned accesses - sequences. + * :c:macro:`RISCV_HWPROBE_MISALIGNED_SLOW`: Misaligned accesses are slower + than equivalent byte accesses. Misaligned accesses may be supported + directly in hardware, or trapped and emulated by software. - * :c:macro:`RISCV_HWPROBE_MISALIGNED_FAST`: Misaligned accesses are supported - in hardware and are faster than the corresponding aligned accesses - sequences. + * :c:macro:`RISCV_HWPROBE_MISALIGNED_FAST`: Misaligned accesses are faster + than equivalent byte accesses. * :c:macro:`RISCV_HWPROBE_MISALIGNED_UNSUPPORTED`: Misaligned accesses are not supported at all and will generate a misaligned address fault. |