Re: [PATCH] [33/58] x86_64: Avoid too many remote cpu references due to /proc/stat

From: Andi Kleen
Date: Thu Jul 19 2007 - 06:42:55 EST


On Thursday 19 July 2007 12:21:49 Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 19, 2007 at 11:55:19AM +0200, Andi Kleen wrote:
> >
> > From: Ravikiran G Thirumalai <kiran@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > Too many remote cpu references due to /proc/stat.
> >
> > On x86_64, with newer kernel versions, kstat_irqs is a bit of a problem.
> > On every call to kstat_irqs, the process brings in per-cpu data from all
> > online cpus. Doing this for NR_IRQS, which is now 256 + 32 * NR_CPUS
> > results in (256+32*63) * 63 remote cpu references on a 64 cpu config.
> > /proc/stat is parsed by common commands like top, who etc, causing
> > lots of cacheline transfers
> >
> > This statistic seems useless. Other 'big iron' arches disable this.
> > Can we disable computing/reporting this statistic? This piece of
> > statistic is not human readable on x86_64 anymore,
> >
> > If not, can we optimize computing this statistic so as to avoid
> > too many remote references (patch to follow)
>
> If we disable this on x86_64 we should just kill it completely for consistency.

I guess it's fine on UP only architectures. I will change it to !CONFIG_SMP
unless someone complains.

-Andi

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