[PATCH] Revert "lib: sparse: Make CHUNK_TYPE_RAW buffer aligned"

[Mattijs Korpershoek]

Hi Gary, Sean,

On lun., nov. 21, 2022 at 10:09, Sean Anderson <sean.anderson at seco.com> wrote:

> On 11/21/22 09:50, Gary Bisson wrote:
>> Hi,
>> 
>> On Fri, Nov 18, 2022 at 10:36:58AM -0500, Sean Anderson wrote:
>>> On 11/18/22 07:13, Gary Bisson wrote:
>>> > This reverts commit 62649165cb02ab95b57360bb362886935f524f26.
>>> > 
>>> > The patch decreased the write performance quite a bit.
>>> > Here is an example on an i.MX 8M Quad platform.
>>> > - Before the revert:
>>> > Sending sparse 'vendor' 1/2 (516436 KB)            OKAY [  5.113s]
>>> > Writing 'vendor'                                   OKAY [128.335s]
>>> > Sending sparse 'vendor' 2/2 (76100 KB)             OKAY [  0.802s]
>>> > Writing 'vendor'                                   OKAY [ 27.902s]
>>> > - After the revert:
>>> > Sending sparse 'vendor' 1/2 (516436 KB)            OKAY [  5.310s]
>>> > Writing 'vendor'                                   OKAY [ 18.041s]
>>> > Sending sparse 'vendor' 2/2 (76100 KB)             OKAY [  1.244s]
>>> > Writing 'vendor'                                   OKAY [  2.663s]
>>> > 
>>> > Considering that the patch only moves buffer around to avoid a warning
>>> > message about misaligned buffers, let's keep the best performances.
>>> 
>>> So what is the point of this warning?
>> 
>> Well the warning does say something true that the cache operation is not
>> aligned. Better ask Simon as he's the one who changed the print from a
>> debug to warn_non_spl one:
>> bcc53bf0958 arm: Show cache warnings in U-Boot proper only
>> 
>> BTW, in my case I couldn't see the misaligned messages, yet I saw the
>> performance hit described above.

I also reproduce this problem on AM62x SK EVM.

Before the revert:
Sending sparse 'super' 1/2 (768793 KB)             OKAY [ 23.954s]
Writing 'super'                                    OKAY [ 75.926s]
Sending sparse 'super' 2/2 (629819 KB)             OKAY [ 19.641s]
Writing 'super'                                    OKAY [ 62.849s]
Finished. Total time: 182.474s

After the revert:
Sending sparse 'super' 1/2 (768793 KB)             OKAY [ 23.895s]
Writing 'super'                                    OKAY [ 12.961s]
Sending sparse 'super' 2/2 (629819 KB)             OKAY [ 19.562s]
Writing 'super'                                    OKAY [ 12.805s]
Finished. Total time: 69.327s

And like Gary, I did not observe the misaligned messages.

Did we come up with a solution for this performance regression?

I will continue looking on my end but please let me know if you already
solved this.

Thanks,

Matijs

>
> Maybe it is better to keep this as a Kconfig? Some arches may support
> unaligned access but others may not. I wonder if we have something like
> this already.
>
> --Seam