[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: Summary of the Arm ports BoF at DC17



On Sun, 2017-09-17 at 12:59 -0700, Vagrant Cascadian wrote:
> On 2017-09-15, Ben Hutchings wrote:
> > On Thu, 2017-09-14 at 03:40 +0100, Steve McIntyre wrote:
> > [...]
> > > There is optional kernel support to trap the exceptions here
> > > and emulate the instructions, but it's really not recommended for
> > > serious use (e.g. on a build machine!).
> > 
> > [...]
> > 
> > Why is it not recommended?  Terrible performance, or known bugs?
> 
> On arm64 kernels building armhf packages for the reproducible builds
> builders, I'm seeing hundreds or even thousands of kernel log warnings
> per second when building anything that makes use of
> CP15_BARRIER_EMULATION (e.g. anything using ghc):
> 
>   [85740.553537] cp15barrier_handler: 115316 callbacks suppressed
>   [85740.559358] "ghc-pkg" (29572) uses deprecated CP15 Barrier instruction at 0xf5beaa7c
>   [85740.567344] "ghc-pkg" (29572) uses deprecated CP15 Barrier instruction at 0xf5beaa9c
>
> That *might* be sufficient to actually impact performance; it certainly
> makes it hard to read other kernel log messages on those machines...

The log rate-limiting is done in the kernel, so the log daemon doesn't
have to process all those messages.  However, the rate-limiting state
is protected with a mutex (actually a spin-lock) so even when the log
message is suppressed it involves an additional two memory barriers.

And I agree that this kind of rate-limiting isn't really sufficient. 
Warning once per process might be more reasonable, but there's
currently no mechanism for that in the kernel.

Ben.

> There was a bug reported on ghc related to this:
> 
>   https://bugs.debian.org/864847
> 
> 
> live well,
>   vagrant
-- 
Ben Hutchings
friends: People who know you well, but like you anyway.

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part


Reply to: