RE: [PATCH next v4 0/5] minmax: Relax type checks in min() and max().

[David Laight]

From: Stephen Rothwell
> Sent: 10 January 2024 06:18
> 
> Hi Linus,
> 
> On Mon, 8 Jan 2024 13:11:12 -0800 Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundationorg> wrote:
> >
> > Whee.
> 
> Yeah.
> 
> > On my machine, that patch makes an "allmodconfig" build go from
> >
> >     10:41 elapsed
> >
> > to
> >
> >      8:46 elapsed
> >
> > so that min/max type checking is almost 20% of the build time.
> >
> > Yeah, I think we need to get rid of it.
> >
> > Can somebody else confirm similar time differences? Or is it just me?
> 
> I was hopeful, but:
> 
> no patch:
> 
> $ /usr/bin/time make ARCH=x86_64 CROSS_COMPILE=x86_64-linux-gnu- -j140 -O -s
> 102460.07user 3710.56system 13:29.05elapsed 13122%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 4023168maxresident)k
> 304inputs+7917056outputs (1998673major+120730959minor)pagefaults 0swaps
> 
> with patch:
> 
> $ /usr/bin/time make ARCH=x86_64 CROSS_COMPILE=x86_64-linux-gnu- -j140 -O -s
> 99775.75user 3684.45system 13:12.89elapsed 13048%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 2217536maxresident)k
> 64inputs+7890304outputs (2104371major+119837267minor)pagefaults 0swaps

That looks like 2500 in 100000 (user) or about 2.5%
I did some rebuilds just changing minmax.h and got just over 1%
for changing __types_ok() to be 1.

I did try a few other things, got some marginal improvements.
But I'm not trying to compile the code with 4 nested calls.

One of the things that does explode it somewhat is the
'return constant for constant' path needed to avoid VLA.
That generates two copies of the expansion.
A separate define for that would help a bit.
Doesn't matter much until you get nested min/max they will hurt.
The other slight annoyance is an extra __builtin_choose_expr()
needed for pointer types - because (void *)1 isn't constant.

min3() was mentioned, but that seems to be a nested expansion.
It would need to be more like clamp() to get any benefit.
(And maybe removing the const-for-const option.)

	David

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