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Date:      Thu, 01 Jun 2006 09:30:16 +0200
From:      Alexander Leidinger <Alexander@Leidinger.net>
To:        Attilio Rao <asmrookie@gmail.com>
Cc:        freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, Suleiman Souhlal <ssouhlal@freebsd.org>, freebsd-arch@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: [patch] Adding optimized kernel copying support - Part III
Message-ID:  <20060601093016.ygeptkv80840gkww@netchild.homeip.net>
In-Reply-To: <3bbf2fe10605311632w58c2949buc072e58ac103d7d@mail.gmail.com>
References:  <3bbf2fe10605311156p7e629283r34d22b368877582d@mail.gmail.com> <447DFA0C.20207@FreeBSD.org> <3bbf2fe10605311329h7adc1722j9088253515e0265b@mail.gmail.com> <20060601084052.D32549@delplex.bde.org> <3bbf2fe10605311632w58c2949buc072e58ac103d7d@mail.gmail.com>

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Quoting Attilio Rao <asmrookie@gmail.com> (from Thu, 1 Jun 2006 =20
01:32:12 +0200):

> 2006/6/1, Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au>:

>> The new code wouldn't behave much differently under SMP.  It just might
>> be a smaller optimization because more memory pressure for SMP causes
>> more cache misses for everything and there are no benefits from copying
>> through MMX/XMM unless nontemporal writes are used.  All (?) CPUs with
>> MMX or SSE* can saturate main memory using 32-bit instructions.  On
>> 32-bit CPUs, the benefits of using MMX/XMM come from being able to
>> saturate the L1 cache on some CPUs (mainly Athlons and not P[2-4]),
>> and from being able to use nontemporal writes on some CPUs (at least
>> AthlonXP via SSE extensions all CPUs with SSE2).
>
> I was just speaking about the copying routine itself and not about the
> SSE2 environment preserving mechanism. It remains untouched in SMP
> case.

AFAIR the DFly FPU rework allows to use FPU/XMM instructions in their =20
kernel without the need to do some manual state preserving (it's done =20
automatically on demand). So one could use XMM instructions in RAID 5 =20
or crypto parts of the code to test if it is a performance benefit. Do =20
I understand the above part right that with this patch this is also =20
the case for us in the UP case, but not in the SMP case?

Bye,
Alexander.

--=20
Selling GoodYear Eagle F1 235/40ZR18, 2x 4mm + 2x 5mm, ~150 EUR
you have to pick it up between Germany/Saarland and Luxembourg/Capellen
http://www.Leidinger.net    Alexander @ Leidinger.net: PGP ID =3D B0063FE7
http://www.FreeBSD.org       netchild @ FreeBSD.org  : PGP ID =3D 72077137




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