Re: [PATCH] mm: clear 1G pages with streaming stores on x86

From: Matthew Wilcox
Date: Thu Mar 26 2020 - 15:46:18 EST


On Mon, Mar 16, 2020 at 03:19:55PM +0300, Kirill A. Shutemov wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 16, 2020 at 11:18:56AM +0100, Michal Hocko wrote:
> > While this might be true, isn't that easily solveable by the existing
> > ALTERNATIVE and cpu features framework. Can we have a feature bit to
> > tell that movnti is worthwile for large data copy routines. Probably
> > something for x86 maintainers.
>
> It still need somody to test which approach is better for the CPU.
> See X86_FEATURE_REP_GOOD.

How about inverting the sense of the bit? Set it on Broadwell-and-
earlier CPUs, where it definitely improves performance by a huge amount,
and new microarches can set it if it still outperforms rep mov?