On 6/12/19 11:48 PM, Nadav Amit wrote: > cpu_tlbstate is mostly private and only the variable is_lazy is shared. > This causes some false-sharing when TLB flushes are performed.
Presumably, all CPUs doing TLB flushes read 'is_lazy'. Because of this, when we write to it we have to do the cache coherency dance to get rid of all the CPUs that might have a read-only copy. I would have *thought* that we only do writes when we enter or exist lazy mode. That's partially true. We do write in enter_lazy_tlb(), but we also *unconditionally* write in switch_mm_irqs_off(). That seems like it might be responsible for a chunk (or even a vast majority) of the cacheline bounces. Is there anything preventing us from turning the switch_mm_irqs_off() write into: if (was_lazy) this_cpu_write(cpu_tlbstate.is_lazy, false); ? I think this patch is probably still a good general idea, but I just wonder if reducing the writes is a better way to reduce bounces.