tree b2f0b92d331561d7b38b717569355b2ffe92fa83
parent 4d8a991d460d4fa4829beaffdcba45a217ca0fa7
author Paolo Abeni <pabeni@redhat.com> 1498744558 +0200
committer Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org> 1498809171 +0200

x86/uaccess: Optimize copy_user_enhanced_fast_string() for short strings

According to the Intel datasheet, the REP MOVSB instruction
exposes a pretty heavy setup cost (50 ticks), which hurts
short string copy operations.

This change tries to avoid this cost by calling the explicit
loop available in the unrolled code for strings shorter
than 64 bytes.

The 64 bytes cutoff value is arbitrary from the code logic
point of view - it has been selected based on measurements,
as the largest value that still ensures a measurable gain.

Micro benchmarks of the __copy_from_user() function with
lengths in the [0-63] range show this performance gain
(shorter the string, larger the gain):

 - in the [55%-4%] range on Intel Xeon(R) CPU E5-2690 v4
 - in the [72%-9%] range on Intel Core i7-4810MQ

Other tested CPUs - namely Intel Atom S1260 and AMD Opteron
8216 - show no difference, because they do not expose the
ERMS feature bit.

Signed-off-by: Paolo Abeni <pabeni@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Alan Cox <gnomes@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
Cc: Andy Lutomirski <luto@kernel.org>
Cc: Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de>
Cc: Brian Gerst <brgerst@gmail.com>
Cc: Denys Vlasenko <dvlasenk@redhat.com>
Cc: H. Peter Anvin <hpa@zytor.com>
Cc: Hannes Frederic Sowa <hannes@stressinduktion.org>
Cc: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com>
Cc: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/4533a1d101fd460f80e21329a34928fad521c1d4.1498744345.git.pabeni@redhat.com
[ Clarified the changelog. ]
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>