[PATCH] ARM: Check for is_smp for tlb_ops and cache_ops boardcast

Russell King - ARM Linux linux at arm.linux.org.uk
Wed Oct 6 18:33:58 EDT 2010


On Wed, Oct 06, 2010 at 07:44:14AM -0700, Tony Lindgren wrote:
> * Russell King - ARM Linux <linux at arm.linux.org.uk> [101005 15:24]:
> > On Tue, Oct 05, 2010 at 03:19:52PM -0700, Tony Lindgren wrote:
> > > * Tony Lindgren <tony at atomide.com> [100907 20:04]:
> > > > This should not be needed when running on UP systems.
> > > > 
> > > > Additionally we will also get an undefined instruction on ARM cores
> > > > without the extended CPUID registers with CONFIG_SMP_ON_UP.
> > > > 
> > > > Also, we can now remove the is_smp() test from mmu.c.
> > > 
> > > Just FYI, I've updated this one more time with to use cpus_empty
> > > instead of !smp_on_up() here as well.
> > 
> > What's the rationale?
> 
> With CPU hotplug if the other SMP cores are unplugged for PM or
> other reasons, no need to do the broadcast.

Yes, but why this expensive test when the smp_on_up() is much cheaper?

smp_call_function_many() already takes care of the "no other CPUs"
case, which is used by on_each_cpu_mask() and on_each_cpu(), which
means these functions won't broadcast the operations to other CPUs
when they're offline.

In any case, if you think that we broadcast every operation to all
CPUs, you're mistaken - TLB and cache ops are broadcast to only
those CPUs which the thread is running on, or in the case of non-MM
specific, to all online CPUs.

So the only thing we have to worry about is "is there an ID register
available" which is covered by the is_smp() test.  Checking the CPU
mask is far more expensive and imho ends up needlessly adding to the
complexity.



More information about the linux-arm-kernel mailing list