[PATCH] Prefetch kernel stacks to speed up context switch
For architecture like ia64, the switch stack structure is fairly large
(currently 528 bytes). For context switch intensive application, we found
that significant amount of cache misses occurs in switch_to() function.
The following patch adds a hook in the schedule() function to prefetch
switch stack structure as soon as 'next' task is determined. This allows
maximum overlap in prefetch cache lines for that structure.
Signed-off-by: Ken Chen <kenneth.w.chen@intel.com>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Cc: "Luck, Tony" <tony.luck@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
diff --git a/include/linux/sched.h b/include/linux/sched.h
index ea1b5f3..c551e6a 100644
--- a/include/linux/sched.h
+++ b/include/linux/sched.h
@@ -604,6 +604,11 @@
#define GROUP_AT(gi, i) \
((gi)->blocks[(i)/NGROUPS_PER_BLOCK][(i)%NGROUPS_PER_BLOCK])
+#ifdef ARCH_HAS_PREFETCH_SWITCH_STACK
+extern void prefetch_stack(struct task_struct*);
+#else
+static inline void prefetch_stack(struct task_struct *t) { }
+#endif
struct audit_context; /* See audit.c */
struct mempolicy;