Re: [PATCH v5.2 00/14] crc32c: Add faster algorithm and self-test code

On Thu, Dec 01, 2011 at 12:13:41PM -0800, Darrick J. Wong wrote:

Hi all,

This patchset (re)uses Bob Pearson's crc32 slice-by-8 code to stamp out a
software crc32c implementation.  It removes the crc32c implementation in
crypto/ in favor of using the stamped-out one in lib/.  There is also a change
to Kconfig so that the kernel builder can pick an implementation best suited
for the hardware.

The motivation for this patchset is that I am working on adding full metadata
checksumming to ext4.  As far as performance impact of adding checksumming
goes, I see nearly no change with a standard mail server ffsb simulation.  On a
test that involves only file creation and deletion and extent tree writes, I
see a drop of about 50 pcercent with the current kernel crc32c implementation;
this improves to a drop of about 20 percent with the enclosed crc32c code.

When metadata is usually a small fraction of total IO, this new implementation
doesn't help much because metadata is usually a small fraction of total IO.
However, when we are doing IO that is almost all metadata (such as rm -rf'ing a
tree), then this patch speeds up the operation substantially.

Incidentally, given that iscsi, sctp, and btrfs also use crc32c, this patchset
should improve their speed as well.  I have not yet quantified that, however.

	I thought they usually used the SSE instruction for crc32 or
equivalent.

Joel

-- 

"I almost ran over an angel
 He had a nice big fat cigar.
 'In a sense,' he said, 'You're alone here
 So if you jump, you'd best jump far.'"

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			jlbec@evilplan.org