[Bloat] Hardware upticks

Stephen Hemminger stephen at networkplumber.org
Tue Jan 5 15:27:03 EST 2016


On Tue, 5 Jan 2016 11:37:02 -0800
Dave Täht <dave at taht.net> wrote:

> 
> 
> On 1/5/16 11:29 AM, Steinar H. Gunderson wrote:
> > On Tue, Jan 05, 2016 at 10:57:13AM -0800, Dave Täht wrote:
> >> Context switch time is probably one of the biggest hidden nightmares in
> >> modern OOO cpu architectures - they only go fast in a straight line. I'd
> >> love to see a 1ghz processor that could context switch in 5 cycles.
> > 
> > It's called hyperthreading? ;-)
> > 
> > Anyway, the biggest cost of a context switch isn't necessarily the time used
> > to set up registers and such. It's increased L1 pressure; your CPU is now
> > running different code and looking at (largely) different data.
> 
> +10.
> 
> A L1/L2 Icache dedicated to interrupt processing code could make a great
> deal of difference, if only cpu makers and benchmarkers would make
> CS time something we valued.
> 
> Dcache, not so much, except for the intel architectures which are now
> doing DMA direct to cache. (any arms doing that?)
> 
> > /* Steinar */
> > 
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Intel has some new Cache QoS stuff that allows configuring how much
cache is allowed per context.  But of course it is only on the newest/latest/unoptinium


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