Re: Processor cores not properly detected/activated?

On 29 May 2014 10:18, John Baldwin <jhb_at_freebsd.org> wrote:

>> > It costs wired memory to increase it for the kernel.  The userland set size
>> > can be increased rather arbitrarily, so we don't need to make it but so large
>> > as it is easy to bump later (even with a branch).
>>
>> Well, what about making the API/KBI use cpuset_t pointers for things
>> rather than including it as a bitmask? Do you think there'd be a
>> noticable performance overhead for the bits where it's indirecting
>> through a pointer to get to the bitmask data?
>
> The wired memory is not due to cpuset_t.  The wired memory usage is due to things
> that do 'struct foo foo_bits[MAXCPU]'.  The KBI issues I mentioned above are
> 'struct rmlock' (so now you want any rmlock users to malloc space, or you
> want rmlock_init() call malloc?  (that seems like a bad idea)).  The other one
> is smp_rendezvous.  Plus, it's not just a pointer, you really need a (pointer,
> size_t) tuple similar to what cpuset_getaffinity(), etc. use.

Why would calling malloc be a problem? Except for the initial setup of
things, anything dynamically allocating structs with embedded things
like rmlocks are already dynamically allocating them via malloc or
uma.

There's a larger fundamental problem with malloc, fragmentation and
getting the required larger allocations for things. But even a 4096
CPU box would require a 512 byte malloc. That shouldn't be that hard
to do. It'd just be from some memory that isn't close to the rest of
the lock state.



-a