This looks like it re-introduces code that Ken Chen backed out about two years ago. Here's Ken's commit that explains what broke last time we made the idle loop look like this. Now that code was wider ranging ... messing with TIF bits too, so maybe this is different this time? -Tony commit 1e185b97b4364063f1135604b87f8d8469944233 Author: Chen, Kenneth W <kenneth.w.chen@xxxxxxxxx> Date: Tue Nov 15 14:37:05 2005 -0800 [PATCH] ia64: cpu_idle performance bug fix Our performance validation on 2.6.15-rc1 caught a disastrous performance regression on ia64 with netperf (-98%) and volanomark (-58%) compares to previous kernel version 2.6.14-git7. See the following chart (result group 1 & 2). http://kernel-perf.sourceforge.net/results.machine_id=26.html We have root caused it to commit 64c7c8f88559624abdbe12b5da6502e8879f8d28 This changeset broke the ia64 task resched notification. In sched.c:resched_task(), a reschedule IPI is conditioned upon TIF_POLLING_NRFLAG. However, the above changeset unconditionally set the polling thread flag for idle tasks regardless whether pal_halt_light is in use or not. As a result, resched IPI is not sent from resched_task(). And since the default behavior on ia64 is to use pal_halt_light, we end up delaying the rescheduling task until next timer tick, and thus cause the performance regression. This fixes the performance bug. I'm glad our performance suite is turning up bad performance bug like this in time. Signed-off-by: Ken Chen <kenneth.w.chen@xxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@xxxxxxxx> diff --git a/arch/ia64/kernel/process.c b/arch/ia64/kernel/process.c index e92ea64..4305d2b 100644 --- a/arch/ia64/kernel/process.c +++ b/arch/ia64/kernel/process.c @@ -202,12 +202,9 @@ default_idle (void) { local_irq_enable(); while (!need_resched()) { - if (can_do_pal_halt) { - local_irq_disable(); - if (!need_resched()) - safe_halt(); - local_irq_enable(); - } else + if (can_do_pal_halt) + safe_halt(); + else cpu_relax(); } } @@ -272,10 +269,14 @@ cpu_idle (void) { void (*mark_idle)(int) = ia64_mark_idle; int cpu = smp_processor_id(); - set_thread_flag(TIF_POLLING_NRFLAG); /* endless idle loop with no priority at all */ while (1) { + if (can_do_pal_halt) + clear_thread_flag(TIF_POLLING_NRFLAG); + else + set_thread_flag(TIF_POLLING_NRFLAG); + if (!need_resched()) { void (*idle)(void); #ifdef CONFIG_SMP - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-ia64" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
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