From: Rajesh Venkatasubramanian This patch adds prefetches for walking a vm_set.list. Adding prefetches for prio tree traversals is tricky and may lead to cache trashing. So this patch just adds prefetches only when walking a vm_set.list. I haven't done any benchmarks to show that this patch improves performance. However, this patch should help to improve performance when vm_set.lists are long, e.g., libc. Since we only prefetch vmas that are guaranteed to be used in the near future, this patch should not result in cache trashing, theoretically. I didn't add any NULL checks before prefetching because prefetch.h clearly says prefetch(0) is okay. --- 25-akpm/mm/prio_tree.c | 27 ++++++++++++++++++--------- 1 files changed, 18 insertions(+), 9 deletions(-) diff -puN mm/prio_tree.c~partial-prefetch-for-vma_prio_tree_next mm/prio_tree.c --- 25/mm/prio_tree.c~partial-prefetch-for-vma_prio_tree_next 2004-05-04 23:06:05.652860752 -0700 +++ 25-akpm/mm/prio_tree.c 2004-05-04 23:06:05.656860144 -0700 @@ -628,28 +628,37 @@ struct vm_area_struct *vma_prio_tree_nex * First call is with NULL vma */ ptr = prio_tree_first(root, iter, begin, end); - if (ptr) - return prio_tree_entry(ptr, struct vm_area_struct, + if (ptr) { + next = prio_tree_entry(ptr, struct vm_area_struct, shared.prio_tree_node); - else + prefetch(next->shared.vm_set.head); + return next; + } else return NULL; } if (vma->shared.vm_set.parent) { - if (vma->shared.vm_set.head) - return vma->shared.vm_set.head; + if (vma->shared.vm_set.head) { + next = vma->shared.vm_set.head; + prefetch(next->shared.vm_set.list.next); + return next; + } } else { next = list_entry(vma->shared.vm_set.list.next, struct vm_area_struct, shared.vm_set.list); - if (!next->shared.vm_set.head) + if (!next->shared.vm_set.head) { + prefetch(next->shared.vm_set.list.next); return next; + } } ptr = prio_tree_next(root, iter, begin, end); - if (ptr) - return prio_tree_entry(ptr, struct vm_area_struct, + if (ptr) { + next = prio_tree_entry(ptr, struct vm_area_struct, shared.prio_tree_node); - else + prefetch(next->shared.vm_set.head); + return next; + } else return NULL; } EXPORT_SYMBOL(vma_prio_tree_next); _