Avoid multiplication (imul) operations when accessing: zone->free_area[order].nr_free This was really tricky to find. I was puzzled why perf reported that rmqueue_bulk was using 44% of the time in an imul operation: │ del_page_from_free_list(): 44,54 │ e2: imul $0x58,%rax,%rax This operation was generated (by compiler) because the struct free_area have size 88 bytes or 0x58 hex. The compiler cannot find a shift operation to use and instead choose to use a more expensive imul, to find the offset into the array free_area[]. The patch align struct free_area to a cache-line, which cause the compiler avoid the imul operation. The imul operation is very fast on modern Intel CPUs. To help fast-path that decrement 'nr_free' move the member 'nr_free' to be first element, which saves one 'add' operation. Looking up instruction latency this exchange a 3-cycle imul with a 1-cycle shl, saving 2-cycles. It does trade some space to do this. Used: gcc (GCC) 9.3.1 20200408 (Red Hat 9.3.1-2) Signed-off-by: Jesper Dangaard Brouer <brouer@xxxxxxxxxx> --- include/linux/mmzone.h | 6 ++++-- 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/include/linux/mmzone.h b/include/linux/mmzone.h index b593316bff3d..4d83201717e1 100644 --- a/include/linux/mmzone.h +++ b/include/linux/mmzone.h @@ -93,10 +93,12 @@ extern int page_group_by_mobility_disabled; #define get_pageblock_migratetype(page) \ get_pfnblock_flags_mask(page, page_to_pfn(page), MIGRATETYPE_MASK) +/* Aligned struct to make zone->free_area[order] access faster */ struct free_area { - struct list_head free_list[MIGRATE_TYPES]; unsigned long nr_free; -}; + unsigned long __pad_to_align_free_list; + struct list_head free_list[MIGRATE_TYPES]; +} ____cacheline_aligned_in_smp; static inline struct page *get_page_from_free_area(struct free_area *area, int migratetype)