Re: [U-Boot] [PATCH] uboot optimize memmove

2013-07-29 Thread Andy Green
Looping Will...

On 29 July 2013 16:28, Dirk Behme  wrote:
> On 26.07.2013 15:42, Andy Green wrote:
>>
>> On 26 July 2013 20:58, Wolfgang Denk  wrote:
>
> ...
>>>
>>> you not make sure that you provide optimized implementations for such
>>> functions and consequently #define __HAVE_ARCH_MEMMOVE (and
>>> __HAVE_ARCH_MEMCPY) ?
>>
>>
>> Yes I found these afterwards... performance is slightly better than
>> memcpy() thanks to Nicolas Pitre it seems.  The U-Boot config for the
>> platform we have didn't know about them, it's much better with them.
>>
>> After I wrote this patch it was also pointed out by Will Newton at
>> Linaro that we have Neon accelerated memcpy lying around with BSD
>> license
>>
>> https://launchpad.net/cortex-strings
>>
>> however for my purposes NOR boot is working good enough with the ARCH
>> versions.
>
>
> I've had a look to
>
> https://launchpad.net/cortex-strings
>
> and there downloaded
>
> https://launchpad.net/cortex-strings/trunk/2013.01/+download/cortex-strings-1.0-2013.01.tar.bz2
>
> (from the green download button on the right side).
>
> The README mentions
>
> src/neon  contains NEON based routines for AArch32.
>
> but the cortex-strings-1.0-2013.01.tar.bz2 seems to contain an empty
> src/neon directory. Is this intended?

I don't know... I agree that dir is empty... Will, do you know the
story?  I found nice-looking ones in reference/newlib but I don't
think they're NEON.

-Andy

> Best regards
>
> Dirk
>
>
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Re: [U-Boot] [PATCH] uboot optimize memmove

2013-07-28 Thread Andy Green
Dear Wolfgang Denk,

On 27 July 2013 03:06, Wolfgang Denk  wrote:
> Dear Andy Green,
>
> In message 
>  you 
> wrote:
>>
>> > Instead of making assumptions on the performance of memcpy() and
>>
>> As I wrote, I measured the performance and got a very big gain, it's
>> 3x faster on my setup to use memcpy() then default memmove().
>
> Yes, in your single test case of copying a Linux kernel image,
> i. e. a multi-megabyte file.

That "single test case" of copying a "multi-megabyte file" is the
reason d'etre of a bootloader...if it doesn't perform well doing that
then it's a problem.

However I agree the alternative arch-specific implementation for ARM
is pretty good, so this is kind of moot.

Since I traced my problem to here I "fixed" it there, but that actual
problem was were using the default implementations at all (the config
was inherited)..

>> By calling that an "assumption" you're saying that there exist
>> platforms where 32-bit linear memmove() is slower than doing it with
>> 8-bit actions?
>
> No.  I said you should not assume that memcpy() is always faster than
> memmove(); a system may use optiomized versions of either.

I did not assume that, I looked at your code for both and saw, and
proved, that using 32-bit operations for mass move actions is going to
perform better than using 8-bit operations.

That's not something you can write off as an "assumption", it's a fact.

>> > adding the overhead of an additional function call (which can be
>> > expensive especially for short copy operations) it would make more
>>
>> I am not sure U-Boot is really in the business of doing small
>> memmoves, but okay...
>
> It's easy to avoid this overhead, and also get rid of the
> restrictions you built into it (otimizong only the non-overlapping
> case), so if we touch that code, we should do it right.

Given that code should perferably never be used, maybe it should print
a warning like "Using default memory ops" and leave it like it is.
The problem is not correctness just inefficiency.

>> > sense to pull the "copy a word at a time" code from memcpy() into
>> > memmove(), too.
>> >
>> > On the other hand - if you really care about performance, then why do
>>
>> I spent several hours figuring out why our NOR boot performance was
>> terrible it's because this default memmove code is gloriously
>> inefficient for all cases.
>>
>> If you like it like that, no worries.
>
> Don't twist my words.  I asked for a different, better implementation,
> that's all.

Unfortunately I'm only looking at it because it made trouble, and we
now no longer use that code.

For the use-case I'm studying (very fast overall boot) it still may
make sense to implement the NEON stuff in which case I'll offer a
patch for that.

-Andy

>
> Best regards,
>
> Wolfgang Denk
>
> --
> DENX Software Engineering GmbH, MD: Wolfgang Denk & Detlev Zundel
> HRB 165235 Munich, Office: Kirchenstr.5, D-82194 Groebenzell, Germany
> Phone: (+49)-8142-66989-10 Fax: (+49)-8142-66989-80 Email: w...@denx.de
> The only time the world beats a path to your door is when you are  in
> the bathroom.
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Re: [U-Boot] [PATCH] uboot optimize memmove

2013-07-26 Thread Andy Green
On 26 July 2013 20:58, Wolfgang Denk  wrote:
> Dear Andy Green,
>
> In message <20130726065323.27333.82421.stgit@localhost.localdomain> you wrote:
>> While studying the reason why kernel copy from NOR was so slow on our 
>> platform,
>> I realized U-Boot is pulling it from 32-bit NOR in 8-bit chunks needlessly.
>>
>> bootm uses memmove() and that just takes the approach by default to move u8s
>> around.
>>
>> This optimization prefers memcpy() implementation (done mostly in 32-bit 
>> reads
>> and writes) if there's no overlap in source and dest, resulting in a huge
>> speedup on our platform (480ms copy from 32-bit NOR ---> 140ms)
>
> Sorry, but I dislike your patch.

I see.

> Instead of making assumptions on the performance of memcpy() and

As I wrote, I measured the performance and got a very big gain, it's >
3x faster on my setup to use memcpy() then default memmove().

By calling that an "assumption" you're saying that there exist
platforms where 32-bit linear memmove() is slower than doing it with
8-bit actions?

> adding the overhead of an additional function call (which can be
> expensive especially for short copy operations) it would make more

I am not sure U-Boot is really in the business of doing small
memmoves, but okay...

> sense to pull the "copy a word at a time" code from memcpy() into
> memmove(), too.
>
> On the other hand - if you really care about performance, then why do

I spent several hours figuring out why our NOR boot performance was
terrible it's because this default memmove code is gloriously
inefficient for all cases.

If you like it like that, no worries.

> you not make sure that you provide optimized implementations for such
> functions and consequently #define __HAVE_ARCH_MEMMOVE (and
> __HAVE_ARCH_MEMCPY) ?

Yes I found these afterwards... performance is slightly better than
memcpy() thanks to Nicolas Pitre it seems.  The U-Boot config for the
platform we have didn't know about them, it's much better with them.

After I wrote this patch it was also pointed out by Will Newton at
Linaro that we have Neon accelerated memcpy lying around with BSD
license

https://launchpad.net/cortex-strings

however for my purposes NOR boot is working good enough with the ARCH versions.

-Andy

> Best regards,
>
> Wolfgang Denk
>
> --
> DENX Software Engineering GmbH, MD: Wolfgang Denk & Detlev Zundel
> HRB 165235 Munich, Office: Kirchenstr.5, D-82194 Groebenzell, Germany
> Phone: (+49)-8142-66989-10 Fax: (+49)-8142-66989-80 Email: w...@denx.de
> It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.
> - George Bernard Shaw
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[U-Boot] [PATCH] uboot optimize memmove

2013-07-26 Thread Andy Green
While studying the reason why kernel copy from NOR was so slow on our platform,
I realized U-Boot is pulling it from 32-bit NOR in 8-bit chunks needlessly.

bootm uses memmove() and that just takes the approach by default to move u8s
around.

This optimization prefers memcpy() implementation (done mostly in 32-bit reads
and writes) if there's no overlap in source and dest, resulting in a huge
speedup on our platform (480ms copy from 32-bit NOR ---> 140ms)

Signed-off-by: Andy Green 
---
 lib/string.c |   10 +-
 1 file changed, 9 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/lib/string.c b/lib/string.c
index c3ad055..96d66e0 100644
--- a/lib/string.c
+++ b/lib/string.c
@@ -542,13 +542,21 @@ void * memmove(void * dest,const void *src,size_t count)
if (src == dest)
return dest;
 
-   if (dest <= src) {
+   if (dest < src) {
+
+   if ((unsigned long)dest + count <= (unsigned long)src)
+   return memcpy(dest, src, count);
+
tmp = (char *) dest;
s = (char *) src;
while (count--)
*tmp++ = *s++;
}
else {
+
+   if ((unsigned long)src + count <= (unsigned long)dest)
+   return memcpy(dest, src, count);
+
tmp = (char *) dest + count;
s = (char *) src + count;
while (count--)

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