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[Arm64] use isb instruction instead of yield in spin loops
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On arm64 we have seen on several databases that ISB (instruction synchronization
barrier) is better to use than yield in a spin loop.  The yield instruction is a
nop.  The isb instruction puts the processor to sleep for some short time.  isb
is a good equivalent to the pause instruction on x86.

Below is an experiment that shows the effects of yield and isb on Arm64 and the
time of a pause instruction on x86 Intel processors.  The micro-benchmarks use
https://github.com/google/benchmark.git

$ cat a.cc
static void BM_scalar_increment(benchmark::State& state) {
  int i = 0;
  for (auto _ : state)
    benchmark::DoNotOptimize(i++);
}
BENCHMARK(BM_scalar_increment);
static void BM_yield(benchmark::State& state) {
  for (auto _ : state)
    asm volatile("yield"::);
}
BENCHMARK(BM_yield);
static void BM_isb(benchmark::State& state) {
  for (auto _ : state)
    asm volatile("isb"::);
}
BENCHMARK(BM_isb);
BENCHMARK_MAIN();

$ g++ -o run a.cc -O2 -lbenchmark -lpthread
$ ./run

--------------------------------------------------------------
Benchmark                    Time             CPU   Iterations
--------------------------------------------------------------

AWS Graviton2 (Neoverse-N1) processor:
BM_scalar_increment      0.485 ns        0.485 ns   1000000000
BM_yield                 0.400 ns        0.400 ns   1000000000
BM_isb                    13.2 ns         13.2 ns     52993304

AWS Graviton (A-72) processor:
BM_scalar_increment      0.897 ns        0.874 ns    801558633
BM_yield                 0.877 ns        0.875 ns    800002377
BM_isb                    13.0 ns         12.7 ns     55169412

Apple Arm64 M1 processor:
BM_scalar_increment      0.315 ns        0.315 ns   1000000000
BM_yield                 0.313 ns        0.313 ns   1000000000
BM_isb                    9.06 ns         9.06 ns     77259282

static void BM_pause(benchmark::State& state) {
  for (auto _ : state)
    asm volatile("pause"::);
}
BENCHMARK(BM_pause);

Intel Skylake processor:
BM_scalar_increment      0.295 ns        0.295 ns   1000000000
BM_pause                  41.7 ns         41.7 ns     16780553

Tested on Graviton2 aarch64-linux with `./x.py test`.
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Sebastian Pop committed Apr 29, 2021
1 parent 39eee17 commit c064b65
Showing 1 changed file with 1 addition and 1 deletion.
2 changes: 1 addition & 1 deletion library/core/src/hint.rs
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -128,7 +128,7 @@ pub fn spin_loop() {
#[cfg(target_arch = "aarch64")]
{
// SAFETY: the `cfg` attr ensures that we only execute this on aarch64 targets.
unsafe { crate::arch::aarch64::__yield() };
unsafe { crate::arch::aarch64::__isb(crate::arch::aarch64::SY) };
}
#[cfg(target_arch = "arm")]
{
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