On 4/18/2018 6:55 PM, Pavan Nikhilesh wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 18, 2018 at 06:43:11PM +0100, Ferruh Yigit wrote:
>> On 4/18/2018 4:30 PM, Pavan Nikhilesh wrote:
>>> Add macro to mark a variable to be mostly read only and place it in a
>>> separate section.
>>>
>>> Signed-off-by: Pavan Nikhilesh <pbhagavat...@caviumnetworks.com>
>>> ---
>>>
>>> Group together mostly read only data to avoid cacheline bouncing, also
>>> useful for auditing purposes.
>>>
>>> lib/librte_eal/common/include/rte_common.h | 5 +++++
>>> 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+)
>>>
>>> diff --git a/lib/librte_eal/common/include/rte_common.h
>>> b/lib/librte_eal/common/include/rte_common.h
>>> index 6c5bc5a76..f2ff2e9e6 100644
>>> --- a/lib/librte_eal/common/include/rte_common.h
>>> +++ b/lib/librte_eal/common/include/rte_common.h
>>> @@ -114,6 +114,11 @@ static void __attribute__((constructor(prio), used))
>>> func(void)
>>> */
>>> #define __rte_noinline __attribute__((noinline))
>>>
>>> +/**
>>> + * Mark a variable to be mostly read only and place it in a separate
>>> section.
>>> + */
>>> +#define __rte_read_mostly __attribute__((__section__(".read_mostly")))
>>
>
> Hi Ferruh,
>
>> Hi Pavan,
>>
>> Is the section ".read_mostly" treated specially [1] or is this just for
>> grouping
>> symbols together (to reduce cacheline bouncing)?
>
> The section .read_mostly is not treated specially it's just for grouping
> symbols.
I have encounter with a blog post claiming this is not working:
"
The problem with the above approach is that once all the __read_mostly variables
are grouped into one section, the remaining "non-read-mostly" variables end-up
together too. This increases the chances that two frequently used elements (in
the "non-read-mostly" region) will end-up competing for the same position (or
cache-line, the basic fixed-sized block for memory<-->cache transfers) in the
cache. Thus frequent accesses will cause excessive cache thrashing on that
particular cache-line thereby degrading the overall system performance.
"
https://thecodeartist.blogspot.com/2011/12/why-readmostly-does-not-work-as-it.html
>
>>
>> [1]
>> If this is special section, can you please point counter part in the kernel?
>
> The kernel has something similar[1] but they have a custom linker script to
> arrange symbols.
>
> [1]
> https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/a27fc14219f2e3c4a46ba9177b04d9b52c875532/arch/x86/include/asm/cache.h#L11
> kernel commit id 54cb27a71f51d304342c79e62fd7667f2171062b
>
>>
>>
>>> +
>>> /*********** Macros for pointer arithmetic ********/
>>>
>>> /**
>>> --
>>> 2.17.0
>>>
>>
