[Intel-gfx] [PATCH] drm/i915 : Avoid superfluous invalidation of CPU cache lines

[Daniel Vetter]

On Tue, Nov 24, 2015 at 10:39:38PM +0000, Chris Wilson wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 24, 2015 at 07:14:31PM +0100, Daniel Vetter wrote:
> > On Tue, Nov 24, 2015 at 12:04:06PM +0200, Ville Syrjälä wrote:
> > > On Tue, Nov 24, 2015 at 03:35:24PM +0530, akash.goel at intel.com wrote:
> > > > From: Akash Goel <akash.goel at intel.com>
> > > > 
> > > > When the object is moved out of CPU read domain, the cachelines
> > > > are not invalidated immediately. The invalidation is deferred till
> > > > next time the object is brought back into CPU read domain.
> > > > But the invalidation is done unconditionally, i.e. even for the case
> > > > where the cachelines were flushed previously, when the object moved out
> > > > of CPU write domain. This is avoidable and would lead to some optimization.
> > > > Though this is not a hypothetical case, but is unlikely to occur often.
> > > > The aim is to detect changes to the backing storage whilst the
> > > > data is potentially in the CPU cache, and only clflush in those case.
> > > > 
> > > > Signed-off-by: Chris Wilson <chris at chris-wilson.co.uk>
> > > > Signed-off-by: Akash Goel <akash.goel at intel.com>
> > > > ---
> > > >  drivers/gpu/drm/i915/i915_drv.h | 1 +
> > > >  drivers/gpu/drm/i915/i915_gem.c | 9 ++++++++-
> > > >  2 files changed, 9 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
> > > > 
> > > > diff --git a/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/i915_drv.h b/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/i915_drv.h
> > > > index df9316f..fedb71d 100644
> > > > --- a/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/i915_drv.h
> > > > +++ b/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/i915_drv.h
> > > > @@ -2098,6 +2098,7 @@ struct drm_i915_gem_object {
> > > >  	unsigned long gt_ro:1;
> > > >  	unsigned int cache_level:3;
> > > >  	unsigned int cache_dirty:1;
> > > > +	unsigned int cache_clean:1;
> > > 
> > > So now we have cache_dirty and cache_clean which seems redundant,
> > > except somehow cache_dirty != !cache_clean?
> 
> Exactly, not entirely redundant. I did think something along MESI lines
> would be useful, but that didn't capture the different meanings we
> employ.
> 
> cache_dirty tracks whether we have been eliding the clflush.
> 
> cache_clean tracks whether we know the cache has been completely
> clflushed.
> 
> (cache_clean implies !cache_dirty, but
> !cache_clean does not imply cache_dirty)
> 
> > We also have read_domains & DOMAIN_CPU. Which is which?
> 
> DOMAIN_CPU implies that the object may be in the cpu cache (modulo the
> clflush elision above).
> 
> DOMAIN_CPU implies !cache_clean
> 
> and even
> 
> cache_clean implies !DOMAIN_CPU
> 
> but
> 
> !DOMAIN_CPU does not imply cache_clean

All the above should be in the kerneldoc (per-struct-member comments
please) of drm_i915_gem_object. Akash, can you please amend your patch?
And please make sure we do include that kerneldoc somewhere ... might need
an upfront patch to do that, for just drm_i915_gem_object.
-Daniel
-- 
Daniel Vetter
Software Engineer, Intel Corporation
http://blog.ffwll.ch