From: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Most of the logic here is in the documentation file. Please take
a look at it.
I know we've come full-circle here back to a tunable, but this
new one is *WAY* simpler. I challenge anyone to describe in one
sentence how the old one worked. Here's the way the new one
works:
If we are flushing more pages than the ceiling, we use
the full flush, otherwise we use invlpg.
Signed-off-by: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
---
b/Documentation/x86/tlb.txt | 64 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
b/arch/x86/mm/tlb.c | 46 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
2 files changed, 110 insertions(+)
diff -puN arch/x86/mm/tlb.c~new-tunable-for-single-vs-full-tlb-flush arch/x86/mm/tlb.c
--- a/arch/x86/mm/tlb.c~new-tunable-for-single-vs-full-tlb-flush 2014-03-05 16:10:10.743099544 -0800
+++ b/arch/x86/mm/tlb.c 2014-03-05 16:10:10.747099726 -0800
@@ -266,3 +266,49 @@ void flush_tlb_kernel_range(unsigned lon
on_each_cpu(do_kernel_range_flush, &info, 1);
}
}
+
+static ssize_t tlbflush_read_file(struct file *file, char __user *user_buf,
+ size_t count, loff_t *ppos)
+{
+ char buf[32];
+ unsigned int len;
+
+ len = sprintf(buf, "%ld\n", tlb_single_page_flush_ceiling);
+ return simple_read_from_buffer(user_buf, count, ppos, buf, len);
+}
+
+static ssize_t tlbflush_write_file(struct file *file,
+ const char __user *user_buf, size_t count, loff_t *ppos)
+{
+ char buf[32];
+ ssize_t len;
+ int ceiling;
+
+ len = min(count, sizeof(buf) - 1);
+ if (copy_from_user(buf, user_buf, len))
+ return -EFAULT;
+
+ buf[len] = '\0';
+ if (kstrtoint(buf, 0, &ceiling))
+ return -EINVAL;
+
+ if (ceiling < 0)
+ return -EINVAL;
+
+ tlb_single_page_flush_ceiling = ceiling;
+ return count;
+}
+
+static const struct file_operations fops_tlbflush = {
+ .read = tlbflush_read_file,
+ .write = tlbflush_write_file,
+ .llseek = default_llseek,
+};
+
+static int __init create_tlb_single_page_flush_ceiling(void)
+{
+ debugfs_create_file("tlb_single_page_flush_ceiling", S_IRUSR | S_IWUSR,
+ arch_debugfs_dir, NULL, &fops_tlbflush);
+ return 0;
+}
+late_initcall(create_tlb_single_page_flush_ceiling);
diff -puN /dev/null Documentation/x86/tlb.txt
--- /dev/null 2014-01-15 16:08:30.019511980 -0800
+++ b/Documentation/x86/tlb.txt 2014-03-05 16:10:10.747099726 -0800
@@ -0,0 +1,64 @@
+When the kernel unmaps or modified the attributes of a range of
+memory, it has two choices:
+ 1. Flush the entire TLB with a two-instruction sequence. This is
+ a quick operation, but it causes collateral damage: TLB entries
+ from areas other than the one we are trying to flush will be
+ destroyed and must be refilled later, at some cost.
+ 2. Use the invlpg instruction to invalidate a single page at a
+ time. This could potentialy cost many more instructions, but
+ it is a much more precise operation, causing no collateral
+ damage to other TLB entries.
+
+Which method to do depends on a few things:
+ 1. The size of the flush being performed. A flush of the entire
+ address space is obviously better performed by flushing the
+ entire TLB than doing 2^48/PAGE_SIZE invlpg calls.
+ 2. The contents of the TLB. If the TLB is empty, then there will
+ be no collateral damage caused by doing the global flush, and
+ all of the invlpg calls will have ended up being wasted work.
+ Whether or not the range being flushed was in the TLB matters
+ as well.
+ 3. The size of the TLB. The larger the TLB, the more collateral
+ damage we do with a full flush. So, the larger the TLB, the
+ more attrative invlpg looks.
+ 4. The microarchitecture. The TLB has become a multi-level
+ cache on modern CPUs, and the global flushes have become more
+ expensive relative to single-page flushes.
+
+There is obviously no way the kernel can know all these things,
+especially the contents of the TLB during a given flush. The
+sizes of the flush will vary greatly depending on the workload as
+well. There is essentially no "right" point to choose.
+
+If you believe that invlpg is being called too often, you can
+lower the tunable:
+
+ /sys/debug/kernel/x86/tlb_single_page_flush_ceiling
+
+This will cause us to do the global flush for more cases.
+Lowering it to 0 will disable the use of invlpg.
+
+You might see invlpg inside of flush_tlb_mm_range() show up in
+profiles, or you can use the trace_tlb_flush() tracepoints. to
+determine how long the flush operations are taking.
+
+Essentially, you are balancing the cycles you spend doing invlpg
+with the cycles that you spend refilling the TLB later.
+
+You can measure how expensive TLB refills are by using
+performance counters and 'perf stat', like this:
+
+perf stat -e
+ cpu/event=0x8,umask=0x84,name=dtlb_load_misses_walk_duration/,
+ cpu/event=0x8,umask=0x82,name=dtlb_load_misses_walk_completed/,
+ cpu/event=0x49,umask=0x4,name=dtlb_store_misses_walk_duration/,
+ cpu/event=0x49,umask=0x2,name=dtlb_store_misses_walk_completed/,
+ cpu/event=0x85,umask=0x4,name=itlb_misses_walk_duration/,
+ cpu/event=0x85,umask=0x2,name=itlb_misses_walk_completed/
+
+That works on an IvyBridge-era CPU (i5-3320M). Different CPUs
+may have differently-named counters, but they should at least
+be there in some form. You can use pmu-tools 'ocperf list'
+(https://github.com/andikleen/pmu-tools) to find the right
+counters for a given CPU.
+
_
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