[PATCH 1/1] arm64: Accelerate Adler32 using arm64 SVE instructions.

[Mark Brown]

On Wed, Nov 04, 2020 at 06:13:06PM +0000, Dave Martin wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 04, 2020 at 05:50:33PM +0000, Mark Brown wrote:

> > I think at a minimum we'd want to handle the vector length explicitly
> > for kernel mode SVE, vector length independent code will work most of
> > the time but at the very least it feels like a landmine waiting to cause
> > trouble.  If nothing else there's probably going to be cases where it
> > makes a difference for performance.  Other than that I'm not currently

...

> The main reasons for constraining the vector length are a) to hide
> mismatches between CPUs in heterogeneous systems, b) to ensure that
> validated software doesn't run with a vector length it wasn't validated
> for, and c) testing.

> For kernel code, it's reasonable to say that all code should be vector-
> length agnostic unless there's a really good reason not to be.  So we
> may not care too much about (b).

> In that case, just setting ZCR_EL1.LEN to max in kernel_sve_begin() (or
> whatever) probably makes sense.

I agree, that's most likely a good default.

> For (c), it might be useful to have a command-line parameter or debugfs
> widget to constrain the vector length for kernel code; perhaps globally
> or perhaps per driver or algo.

I think a global control would be good for testing, it seems simpler and
easier all round.  The per thing tuning seems more useful for cases
where we run into something like a performance reason to use a limited
set of vector lengths but I think we should only add that when we have
at least one user for it, some examples of actual restrictions we want
would probably be helpful for designing the interface.

> Nonetheless, working up a candidate algorithm to help us see whether
> there is a good use case seems like a worthwhile project, so I don't
> want to discourage that too much.

Definitely worth exploring.
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