On Wed, May 11, 2022 at 03:25:49PM -0700, John Hubbard wrote: > On 5/11/22 2:46 PM, Minchan Kim wrote: > > > I read that, but there was never any real justification there for needing > > > to prevent a re-read of mt, just a preference: "I'd like to keep use the local > > > variable mt's value in folloing conditions checks instead of refetching > > > the value from get_pageblock_migratetype." > > > > > > But I don't believe that there is any combination of values of mt that > > > will cause a problem here. > > > > > > I also think that once we pull in experts, they will tell us that the > > > compiler is not going to re-run a non-trivial function to re-fetch a > > > value, but I'm not one of those experts, so that's still arguable. But > > > imagine what the kernel code would look like if every time we call > > > a large function, we have to consider if it actually gets called some > > > arbitrary number of times, due to (anti-) optimizations by the compiler. > > > This seems like something that is not really happening. > > > > Maybe, I might be paranoid since I have heard too subtle things > > about how compiler could changes high level language code so wanted > > be careful especially when we do lockless-stuff. > > > > Who cares when we change the large(?) function to small(?) function > > later on? I'd like to hear from experts to decide it. > > > > Yes. But one thing that is still unanswered, that I think you can > answer, is: even if the compiler *did* re-read the mt variable, what > problems could that cause? I claim "no problems", because there is > no combination of 0, _CMA, _ISOLATE, _CMA|ISOLATE that will cause > problems here. What scenario I am concerning with __READ_ONCE so compiler inlining get_pageblock_migratetype two times are CPU 0 CPU 1 alloc_contig_range is_pinnable_page start_isolate_page_range set_pageblock_migratetype(MIGRATE_ISOLATE) if (get_pageeblock_migratetype(page) == MIGRATE_CMA) so it's false undo: set_pageblock_migratetype(MIGRATE_CMA) if (get_pageeblock_migratetype(page) == MIGRATE_ISOLATE) so it's false In the end, CMA memory would be pinned by CPU 0 process so CMA allocation keep failed until the process release the refcount. > > Any if that's true, then we can leave the experts alone, because > the answer is there without knowing what happens exactly to mt. > > thanks, > > -- > John Hubbard > NVIDIA >