The routine is used a lot, while the wakeup almost never has anyone to deal with. wake_up_all() takes an irq-protected spinlock, wq_has_sleeper() "only" contains a full fence -- not free by any means, but still cheaper. Sample result tracing waiters using a custom probe during -j 20 kernel build (0 - no waiters, 1 - waiters): @[ wakeprobe+5 __wake_up_common+63 __wake_up+54 __d_add+234 d_splice_alias+146 ext4_lookup+439 path_openat+1746 do_filp_open+195 do_sys_openat2+153 __x64_sys_openat+86 do_syscall_64+82 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+118 ]: [0, 1) 13999 |@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@| [1, ...) 1 | | So that 14000 calls in total from this backtrace, where only one time had a waiter. Signed-off-by: Mateusz Guzik <mjguzik@xxxxxxxxx> --- fs/dcache.c | 3 ++- 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/fs/dcache.c b/fs/dcache.c index df8833fe9986..bd5aa136153a 100644 --- a/fs/dcache.c +++ b/fs/dcache.c @@ -2497,7 +2497,8 @@ static inline void end_dir_add(struct inode *dir, unsigned int n, { smp_store_release(&dir->i_dir_seq, n + 2); preempt_enable_nested(); - wake_up_all(d_wait); + if (wq_has_sleeper(d_wait)) + wake_up_all(d_wait); } static void d_wait_lookup(struct dentry *dentry) -- 2.43.0