Do you have any concrete examples of -fconserve-stack giving an overall
win that isn't in the noise? The fact that the GCC documentation
explicitly states that enabling the option can lead to `making the
program slower' does make me question why we're enabling it in the first
place.

Because the kernel has a limited stack. We had a few cases in the past where
inlining blew it, especially in large ioctl switch() functions which inlined
lots of others.

On modern gccs it's better because it is smarter about sharing stack 
slots in large
functions. This was also worked around with manual noinlines.

But it's still far safer to tell gcc to conserve stack.

I consider the ARM gcc behaviour just a bug. The thing was really only 
intended
for the inliner (I asked for it originally)

-Andi