[patch] Make slab allocator work with SLAB_MUST_HWCACHE_ALIGN

From: Ravikiran G Thirumalai
Date: Thu Sep 11 2003 - 06:05:13 EST


On Thu, Sep 11, 2003 at 11:24:30AM +0530, Ravikiran G Thirumalai wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 10, 2003 at 11:41:04AM -0400, Robert Love wrote:
> > On Wed, 2003-09-10 at 04:16, Ravikiran G Thirumalai wrote:
> >
> > > Am I missing something or can there really be two objects on the same
> > > cacheline even when SLAB_HWCACHE_ALIGN is specified?
> >
> > No, you are right.
> >
> > If your object _must_ be cache aligned, use SLAB_MUST_HWCACHE_ALIGN.
> >
>
> WOW!!!
> Looking at the code though, SLAB_MUST_HWCACHE_ALIGN is never considered
> by kmem_cache_create or kmem_cache_alloc. So, right now, there is no way of
> getting objects which are _guaranteed_ to be cacheline aligned!!!(?)
>

Hi Andrew, Manfred
Looks like SLAB_HWCACHE_ALIGN does not guarantee cacheline alignment
and SLAB_MUST_HWCACHE_ALIGN is not at all recognised by the slab code.
(Right now, SLAB_MUST_HWCACHE_ALIGN caches are aligned to sizeof (void *)!!)

The following patch fixes the slab for this. Note that I have replaced
alignment arithmetic to use ALIGN macro too. I have done some basic
testing on a 4 way pIII with 32 byte cacheline -- but the patch probably
needs testing on other archs. Please give it a whirl on mm* trees.
This should help task_struct cache and pte_chain caches (other users of
SLAB_MUST_HWCACHE_ALIGN also use SLAB_HWCACHE_ALIGN -- smart huh?)

I also propose to rename SLAB_HWCACHE_ALIGN to SLAB_MAY_HWCACHE_ALIGN since
SLAB_HWCACHE_ALIGN seems very misleading -- if everyone agrees.

Andrew, this also means alloc_percpu in its current form is not guaranteed
to work on machines with cacheline sizes greater than 32 bytes. I am
working on a fix for alloc_percpu.

Thanks,
Kiran


diff -ruN -X dontdiff.1 linux-2.6.0-test5-mm1/mm/slab.c slabfix-2.6.0-test5-mm1/mm/slab.c
--- linux-2.6.0-test5-mm1/mm/slab.c Thu Sep 11 15:08:37 2003
+++ slabfix-2.6.0-test5-mm1/mm/slab.c Thu Sep 11 15:23:28 2003
@@ -1101,7 +1101,7 @@
#endif
#endif
align = BYTES_PER_WORD;
- if (flags & SLAB_HWCACHE_ALIGN)
+ if ((flags & SLAB_HWCACHE_ALIGN) | (flags & SLAB_MUST_HWCACHE_ALIGN))
align = L1_CACHE_BYTES;

/* Determine if the slab management is 'on' or 'off' slab. */
@@ -1112,12 +1112,14 @@
*/
flags |= CFLGS_OFF_SLAB;

- if (flags & SLAB_HWCACHE_ALIGN) {
+ if (flags & SLAB_MUST_HWCACHE_ALIGN) {
/* Need to adjust size so that objs are cache aligned. */
+ size = ALIGN(size, align);
+ } else if (flags & SLAB_HWCACHE_ALIGN) {
/* Small obj size, can get at least two per cache line. */
while (size <= align/2)
align /= 2;
- size = (size+align-1)&(~(align-1));
+ size = ALIGN(size, align);
}

/* Cal size (in pages) of slabs, and the num of objs per slab.
@@ -1175,8 +1177,7 @@
}

/* Offset must be a multiple of the alignment. */
- offset += (align-1);
- offset &= ~(align-1);
+ offset = ALIGN(offset, align);
if (!offset)
offset = L1_CACHE_BYTES;
cachep->colour_off = offset;
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/