Re: [x86] Fix prefetch instruction

From: H. Peter Anvin
Date: Fri Aug 05 2011 - 16:13:58 EST


On 08/05/2011 09:18 AM, Christoph Lameter wrote:
> The prefetchnta instruction used for prefetching on x86 is a special instruction
> used for streaming that is usually used to avoid polluting the l2 and l3 caches.
> The cacheline will be evicted rapidly.
>
> What we need is a prefetch that puts the cacheline in all levels of the cache hierachy instead.
> Change the instruction to do that.
>
> Acked-by: Andi Kleen <ak@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <cl@xxxxxxxxx>
>

Have you done any performance analysis on this versus the null case? I
know there are some workloads where it helps, but if it hurts as many as
it helps...

-hpa

--
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/