When running the likely/unlikely profiler, one of the results did not look
accurate. It noted that the unlikely() in link_path_walk() was 100%
incorrect. When I added a trace_printk() to see what was happening there, it
became 80% correct! Looking deeper into what whas happening, I found that
gcc split that if statement into two paths. One where the if statement
became a constant, the other path a variable. The other path had the if
statement always hit (making the unlikely there, always false), but since
the #define unlikely() has:
#define unlikely() (__builtin_constant_p(x) ? !!(x) : __branch_check__(x, 0))
Where constants are ignored by the branch profiler, the "constant" path
made by the compiler was ignored, even though it was hit 80% of the time.
By just passing the constant value to the __branch_check__() function and
tracing it out of line (as always correct, as likely/unlikely isn't a factor
for constants), then we get back the accurate readings of branches that were
optimized by gcc causing part of the execution to become constant.
Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt (VMware) <rostedt@goodmis.org>
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