x86: Support __attribute__((__cold__)) in gcc 4.3

gcc 4.3 supports a new __attribute__((__cold__)) to mark functions cold. Any
path directly leading to a call of this function will be unlikely. And gcc
will try to generate smaller code for the function itself.

Please use with care. The code generation advantage isn't large and in most
cases it is not worth uglifying code with this.

This patch marks some common error functions like panic(), printk()
as cold.  This will longer term make many unlikely()s unnecessary, although
we can keep them for now for older compilers.

BUG is not marked cold because there is currently no way to tell
gcc to mark a inline function told.

Also all __init and __exit functions are marked cold. With a non -Os
build this will tell the compiler to generate slightly smaller code
for them. I think it currently only uses less alignments for labels,
but that might change in the future.

One disadvantage over *likely() is that they cannot be easily instrumented
to verify them.

Another drawback is that only the latest gcc 4.3 snapshots support this.
Unfortunately we cannot detect this using the preprocessor. This means older
snapshots will fail now. I don't think that's a problem because they are
unreleased compilers that nobody should be using.

gcc also has a __hot__ attribute, but I don't see any sense in using
this in the kernel right now. But someday I hope gcc will be able
to use more aggressive optimizing for hot functions even in -Os,
if that happens it should be added.

Includes compile fix from Thomas Gleixner.

Cc: Jan Hubicka <jh@suse.cz>
Signed-off-by: Andi Kleen <ak@suse.de>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

1 files changed, 4 insertions, 4 deletions

diff --git a/include/linux/kernel.h b/include/linux/kernel.h
index 1eb9cde550c4..4300bb462d29 100644
--- a/include/linux/kernel.h
+++ b/include/linux/kernel.h
@@ -106,7 +106,7 @@ extern int cond_resched(void);
 extern struct atomic_notifier_head panic_notifier_list;
 extern long (*panic_blink)(long time);
 NORET_TYPE void panic(const char * fmt, ...)
-        __attribute__ ((NORET_AND format (printf, 1, 2)));
+        __attribute__ ((NORET_AND format (printf, 1, 2))) __cold;
 extern void oops_enter(void);
 extern void oops_exit(void);
 extern int oops_may_print(void);
@@ -155,14 +155,14 @@ extern void dump_thread(struct pt_regs *regs, struct user *dump);
 asmlinkage int vprintk(const char *fmt, va_list args)
         __attribute__ ((format (printf, 1, 0)));
 asmlinkage int printk(const char * fmt, ...)
-        __attribute__ ((format (printf, 1, 2)));
+        __attribute__ ((format (printf, 1, 2))) __cold;
 #else
 static inline int vprintk(const char *s, va_list args)
         __attribute__ ((format (printf, 1, 0)));
 static inline int vprintk(const char *s, va_list args) { return 0; }
 static inline int printk(const char *s, ...)
         __attribute__ ((format (printf, 1, 2)));
-static inline int printk(const char *s, ...) { return 0; }
+static inline int __cold printk(const char *s, ...) { return 0; }
 #endif
 
 unsigned long int_sqrt(unsigned long);
@@ -212,7 +212,7 @@ extern enum system_states {
 #define TAINT_USER                      (1<<6)
 #define TAINT_DIE                       (1<<7)
 
-extern void dump_stack(void);
+extern void dump_stack(void) __cold;
 
 enum {
         DUMP_PREFIX_NONE,