Out of interest, does it make the code smaller if you mark ioat2_get_ring_ent() and ioat2_ring_mask() with __attribute_const__? I'm not sure whether it'll affect how long gcc is willing to cache these, but once computed, I would guess they won't change within the calling function. Also, is the device you're driving watching the ring and its indices? If so, does it modify the indices? If that is the case, you might need to use read_barrier_depends() rather than smp_read_barrier_depends(). > + prefetch(ioat2_get_ring_ent(ioat, idx + i + 1)); > + desc = ioat2_get_ring_ent(ioat, idx + i); > dump_desc_dbg(ioat, desc); > tx = &desc->txd; > if (tx->cookie) { Is this right, I wonder? You're prefetching [i+1] before reading [i]? Doesn't this mean that you might have to wait for [i+1] to be retrieved from RAM before [i] can be read? Should you instead read tx->cookie before issuing the prefetch? Admittedly, this is only likely to affect the reading of the head of the queue - subsequent reads in the same loop will, of course, have been prefetched. David -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html