Re: [RFC 09/13] x86/mm: Disable interrupts when flushing the TLB using CR3

From: Dave Hansen
Date: Wed Jan 13 2016 - 18:56:25 EST


On 01/13/2016 03:51 PM, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 13, 2016 at 3:43 PM, Dave Hansen
> <dave.hansen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> On 01/13/2016 03:35 PM, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
>>> Can anyone here ask a hardware or microcode person what's going on
>>> with CR3 writes possibly being faster than INVPCID? Is there some
>>> trick to it?
>>
>> I just went and measured it myself this morning. "INVPCID Type 3" (all
>> contexts no global) on a Skylake system was 15% slower than a CR3 write.
>>
>> Is that in the same ballpark from what you've observed?
>
> It's similar, except that I was comparing "INVPCID Type 1" (single
> context no globals) to a CR3 write.

Ahh, because you're using PCID... That one I saw as being ~1.85x the
number of cycles that a CR3 write was.

> Type 2, at least, is dramatically faster than the pair of CR4 writes
> it replaces.

Yeah, I saw the same thing. Type 2 was ~2.4x faster than the CR4 writes.