GitLab

Commit c0ff7453 ("cpuset,mm: fix no node to alloc memory when
changing cpuset's mems") wins a super prize for the largest number of
memory barriers entered into fast paths for one commit.

[get|put]_mems_allowed is incredibly heavy with pairs of full memory
barriers inserted into a number of hot paths.  This was detected while
investigating at large page allocator slowdown introduced some time
after 2.6.32.  The largest portion of this overhead was shown by
oprofile to be at an mfence introduced by this commit into the page
allocator hot path.

For extra style points, the commit introduced the use of yield() in an
implementation of what looks like a spinning mutex.

This patch replaces the full memory barriers on both read and write
sides with a sequence counter with just read barriers on the fast path
side.  This is much cheaper on some architectures, including x86.  The
main bulk of the patch is the retry logic if the nodemask chan...