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powerpc: Optimise enable_kernel_altivec
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Add two optimisations to enable_kernel_altivec:

- enable_kernel_altivec has already determined if we need to
save the previous task's state but we call giveup_altivec
in both cases, requiring an extra branch in giveup_altivec. Create
giveup_altivec_notask which only turns on the VMX bit in the
MSR.

- We write the VMX MSR bit each time we call enable_kernel_altivec
even it was already set. Check the bit and branch out if we have
already set it. The classic case for this is vectored IO
where we have to copy multiple buffers to or from userspace.

The following testcase was used to confirm this patch improves
performance:

http://ozlabs.org/~anton/junkcode/copy_to_user.c

Since the current breakpoint for using VMX in copy_tofrom_user is
4096 bytes, I'm using buffers of 4096 + 1 cacheline (4224) bytes.
A benchmark of 16 entry readvs (-s 16):

time copy_to_user -l 4224 -s 16 -i 1000000

completes 5.2% faster on a POWER7 PS700.

Signed-off-by: Anton Blanchard <anton@samba.org>
Signed-off-by: Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org>
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Anton Blanchard authored and Benjamin Herrenschmidt committed Apr 30, 2012
1 parent 8cd3c23 commit 3500087
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Showing 3 changed files with 12 additions and 1 deletion.
1 change: 1 addition & 0 deletions arch/powerpc/include/asm/switch_to.h
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -40,6 +40,7 @@ static inline void discard_lazy_cpu_state(void)
#ifdef CONFIG_ALTIVEC
extern void flush_altivec_to_thread(struct task_struct *);
extern void giveup_altivec(struct task_struct *);
extern void giveup_altivec_notask(void);
#else
static inline void flush_altivec_to_thread(struct task_struct *t)
{
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2 changes: 1 addition & 1 deletion arch/powerpc/kernel/process.c
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -124,7 +124,7 @@ void enable_kernel_altivec(void)
if (current->thread.regs && (current->thread.regs->msr & MSR_VEC))
giveup_altivec(current);
else
giveup_altivec(NULL); /* just enable AltiVec for kernel - force */
giveup_altivec_notask();
#else
giveup_altivec(last_task_used_altivec);
#endif /* CONFIG_SMP */
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10 changes: 10 additions & 0 deletions arch/powerpc/kernel/vector.S
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -89,6 +89,16 @@ _GLOBAL(load_up_altivec)
/* restore registers and return */
blr

_GLOBAL(giveup_altivec_notask)
mfmsr r3
andis. r4,r3,MSR_VEC@h
bnelr /* Already enabled? */
oris r3,r3,MSR_VEC@h
SYNC
MTMSRD(r3) /* enable use of VMX now */
isync
blr

/*
* giveup_altivec(tsk)
* Disable VMX for the task given as the argument,
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