[ARM] 2947/1: copy template with new memcpy/memmove
Patch from Nicolas Pitre This patch provides a new implementation for optimized memory copy functions on ARM. It is made of two levels: a template that consists of the core copy code and separate files that define macros to be used with the core code depending on the type of copy needed. This allows for best performances while sharing the same core for implementing memcpy(), copy_from_user() and copy_to_user() for instance. Two reasons for this work: 1) the current copy_to_user/copy_from_user implementation assumes no task switch will ever occur in the middle of each copied page making it completely unsafe with CONFIG_PREEMPT=y. 2) current copy implementations are measurably suboptimal and optimizing different implementations separately is a pain and more opportunities for bugs. The reason for (1) is the fact that copy inside user pages are performed with the ldm instruction which has no mean for testing user protections and could possibly race with process preemption bypassing the COW mechanism for example. This is a longstanding issue that we said ought to be fixed for about two years now. The solution is to substitute those ldm insns with a series of ldrt or strt insns to enforce user memory protection. At least on StrongARM and XScale cores the ldm is not faster than the equivalent ldr/str insns with a warm i-cache so there is no measurable performance degradation with that change. The fact that the copy code is a template makes it pretty easy to reuse the same core code as for memcpy and benefit from the same performance optimizations. Now (2) is best demonstrated with actual throughput measurements. First, here is a summary of memcopy tests performed on a StrongARM core: PTR alignment buffer size kernel version this version ------------------------------------------------------------ aligned 32 59.73 107.43 unaligned 32 61.31 74.72 aligned 100 132.47 136.15 unaligned 100 103.84 123.76 aligned 4096 130.67 130.80 unaligned 4096 130.68 130.64 aligned 1048576 68.03 68.18 unaligned 1048576 68.03 68.18 The buffer size is in bytes and the measured speed in MB/s. The copy was performed repeatedly with given buffer and throughput averaged over 3 seconds. Here we can see that the current kernel version has a higher entry cost that shows up with small buffers. As buffer size grows both implementation converge to the same throughput. Now here's the exact same test performed on an XScale core (PXA255): PTR alignment buffer size kernel version this version ------------------------------------------------------------ aligned 32 46.99 77.58 unaligned 32 53.61 59.59 aligned 100 107.19 136.59 unaligned 100 83.61 97.58 aligned 4096 129.13 129.98 unaligned 4096 128.36 128.53 aligned 1048576 53.76 59.41 unaligned 1048576 33.67 56.96 Again we can see the entry setup cost being higher for the current kernel before getting to the main copy loop. Then throughput results converge as long as the buffer remains in the cache. Then the 1MB case shows more differences probably due to better pld placement and/or less instruction interlocks in this proposed implementation. Disclaimer: The PXA system was running with slower clocks than the StrongARM system so trying to infer any conclusion by comparing those separate sets of results side by side would be completely inappropriate. So... What this patch does is to replace both memcpy and memmove with an implementation based on the provided copy code template. The memmove code is kept separate since it is used only if the memory areas involved do overlap in which case the code is a transposition of the template but with the copy occurring in the opposite direction (trying to fit that mode into the template turned it into a mess not worth it for memmove alone). And obviously both memcpy and memmove were tested with all kinds of pointer alignments and buffer sizes to exercise all code paths for correctness. The next patch will provide the now trivial replacement implementation copy_to_user and copy_from_user. Signed-off-by:Nicolas Pitre <nico@cam.org> Signed-off-by:
Russell King <rmk+kernel@arm.linux.org.uk>
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arch/arm/lib/copy_template.S
0 → 100644
arch/arm/lib/memmove.S
0 → 100644
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