Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Sun, 18 Aug 2002 12:33:34 -0700 (PDT)
From:      Matthew Dillon <dillon@apollo.backplane.com>
To:        Julian Elischer <julian@elischer.org>
Cc:        Ian Dowse <iedowse@maths.tcd.ie>, Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au>, arch@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Solving the stack gap issue 
Message-ID:  <200208181933.g7IJXYC5072982@apollo.backplane.com>
References:   <Pine.BSF.4.21.0208181024530.35342-100000@InterJet.elischer.org>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
:On Sun, 18 Aug 2002, Ian Dowse wrote:
:> 
:> If there is agreement on the td vs. curthread issue, then that would
:> obviously be easy to change.
:
:A few days ago, Peter gave some comments as to the expense of using
:curthread. I must admit this is something where some architectureal
:guidance would be a good thing.... maybe something like
:"Use a local if you need to access a Per-cpu variable more than twice
:in a function", and "passing a thread pointer as an argument (is/is not)
:preferable to calling curtread explicitly in the child function".
:
:Julian

    I would consider this to be more expensive:

	proc1()
	{
	    struct thread *td = curthread;
	    ...
	    proc2(td)
	}

	proc2(td)
	{
	    ...
	}

    And this to be less expensive:

	proc1()
	{
	    proc2();
	}

	proc2()
	{
	    struct thread *td = curthread;

	    ... use td several times ...
	}

    At least for I386.  Ultimately I think this will be generally true on
    any architecture.  If a procedure uses 'curthread' multiple times loading
    it into a local at the top of the procedure should be a sufficient 
    optimization.  Passing td around to dozens or hundreds of procedures
    just for the sake of avoiding accessing 'curthread' is bad design.

					-Matt
					Matthew Dillon 
					<dillon@backplane.com>

To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200208181933.g7IJXYC5072982>