* David S. Miller <20050705.164503.104035718.davem@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> 2005-07-05
16:45
> From: Thomas Graf <tgraf@xxxxxxx>
> Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2005 01:41:04 +0200
>
> > I still think we can fix this performance issue without manually
> > unrolling the loop or we should at least try to. In the end gcc
> > should notice the constant part of the loop and move it out so
> > basically the only difference should the additional prio++ and
> > possibly a failing branch prediction.
>
> But the branch prediction is where I personally think a lot
> of the lossage is coming from. These can cost upwards of 20
> or 30 processor cycles, easily. That's getting close to the
> cost of a L2 cache miss.
Absolutely. I think what happens is that we produce predicion
failures due to the logic within qdisc_dequeue_head(), I
cannot back this up with numbers though.
> I see the difficulties with this change now, why don't we revisit
> this some time in the future?
Fine with me.
Eric, the patch I just posted should result in the same branch
prediction as your loop unrolling. The only additional overhead
we still have is the list + prio thing and an additional conditional
jump to do the loop. If you have the cycles etc. it would be nice
to compare it with your numbers.
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