2012/7/10 Mel Gorman <mgorman@xxxxxxx>: > You say that invoking the function is very costly. I agree that a function > call with that many parameters is hefty but it is also in the slow path of > the allocator. For order-0 allocations we are about to enter direct reclaim > where I would expect the cost far exceeds the cost of a function call. Yes, I agree. > If the cost is indeed high and you have seen this in profiles then I > suggest you create a forced inline function alloc_pages_direct_compact > that does this; > > if (order != 0) > __alloc_pages_direct_compact(...) > > and then call alloc_pages_direct_compact instead of > __alloc_pages_direct_compact. After that, recheck the profiles (although I > expect the difference to be marginal) and the size of vmlinux (if it gets > bigger, it's probably not worth it). > That would be functionally similar to your patch but it will preserve git > blame, churn less code and be harder to make mistakes with in the unlikely > event a third call to alloc_pages_direct_compact is ever added. Your suggestion looks good. But, the size of page_alloc.o is more than before. I test 3 approaches, vanilla, always_inline and wrapping(alloc_page_direct_compact which is your suggestion). In my environment (v3.5-rc5, gcc 4.6.3, x86_64), page_alloc.o shows below number. total, .text section, .text.unlikely page_alloc_vanilla.o: 93432, 0x510a, 0x243 page_alloc_inline.o: 93336, 0x52ca, 0xa4 page_alloc_wrapping.o: 93528, 0x515a, 0x238 Andrew said that inlining add only 26 bytes to .text of page_alloc.o, but in my system, need more bytes. Currently, I think this patch doesn't have obvious benefit, so I want to drop it. Any objections? Thanks for good comments. -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@xxxxxxxxx. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: <a href=mailto:"dont@xxxxxxxxx"> email@xxxxxxxxx </a>