[XenPPC] Re: copy_4K_page() doesn't use dcbtst?

[Paul Mackerras <paulus@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hollis Blanchard writes:

> Hi Paul, some Xen people were just noticing that copy_4K_page
> (arch/powerpc/lib/copypage_64.S) doesn't use the dcbtst instruction. Why
> doesn't it help there?

Why would we want to read the cache lines for the destination from
memory when we're only going to overwrite them completely anyway?

A stronger argument would be for using dcbz, but IIRC it actually made
things slower (on POWER4 at least).  I suspect the hardware is
gathering the stores for the whole of each cache line automatically,
so using dcbz doesn't provide any benefit.

I did a lot of measurements of memory copy speed on POWER4 (using
different copy loops, copy sizes, alignments, cache hot/cold cases)
and the copy_4K_page loop is the fastest I could come up with for
POWER4.  If anyone can come up with a routine that is measurably
faster on current machines, I'm happy to look at it, of course.

Paul.


_______________________________________________
Xen-ppc-devel mailing list
Xen-ppc-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.xensource.com/xen-ppc-devel