[RFC 0/2] add static key for slub_debug

From: Vlastimil Babka
Date: Thu Apr 04 2019 - 05:23:07 EST


Hi,

I looked a bit at SLUB debugging capabilities and first thing I noticed is
there's no static key guarding the runtime enablement as is common for similar
debugging functionalities, so here's a RFC to add it. Can be further improved
if there's interest.

It's true that in the alloc fast path the debugging check overhead is AFAICS
amortized by the per-cpu cache, i.e. when the allocation is from there, no
debugging functionality is performed. IMHO that's kinda a weakness, especially
for SLAB_STORE_USER, so I might also look at doing something about it, and then
the static key might be more critical for overhead reduction.

In the freeing fast path I quickly checked the stats and it seems that in
do_slab_free(), the "if (likely(page == c->page))" is not as likely as it
declares, as in the majority of cases, freeing doesn't happen on the object
that belongs to the page currently cached. So the advantage of a static key in
slow path __slab_free() should be more useful immediately.

Vlastimil Babka (2):
mm, slub: introduce static key for slub_debug
mm, slub: add missing kmem_cache_debug() checks

mm/slub.c | 31 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--
1 file changed, 29 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

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2.21.0