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

[Mattijs Korpershoek]

On ven., juin 16, 2023 at 13:56, Mattijs Korpershoek <mkorpershoek at baylibre.com> wrote:

> 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.

Answering to myself here. My attempt of solving this problem has been
submitted here:

https://lore.kernel.org/r/20230616-sparse-flash-fix-v1-1-6bafeacc567b@baylibre.com


>
> 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