Optimize apply_slack() for size and speed -- http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1201.3/03172.html
smp: patches from mainline 3.5 to hopefully help with hotplug efficiency

Thomas Gleixner's generic-idle patches:

smp: Add task_struct argument to __cpu_up()
Preparatory patch to make the idle thread allocation for secondary
cpus generic.
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/tip/tip.git;a=commit;h=8239c25f47d2b318156993b15f33900a86ea5e17

smp: Add generic smpboot facility
Start a new file, which will hold SMP and CPU hotplug related generic
infrastructure.
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/tip/tip.git;a=commit;h=38498a67aa2cf8c80754b8d304bfacc10bc582b5

smp: Provide generic idle thread allocation
All SMP architectures have magic to fork the idle task and to store it
for reusage when cpu hotplug is enabled. Provide a generic
infrastructure for it.
Create/reinit the idle thread for the cpu which is brought up in the
generic code and hand the thread pointer to the architecture code via
__cpu_up().
Note, that fork_idle() is called via a workqueue, because this
guarantees that the idle thread does not get a reference to a user
space VM. This can happen when the boot process did not bring up all
possible cpus and a later cpu_up() is initiated via the sysfs
interface. In that case fork_idle() would be called in the context of
the user space task and take a reference on the user space VM.
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/tip/tip.git;a=commit;h=29d5e0476e1c4a513859e7858845ad172f560389

arm: Use generic idle thread allocation
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/tip/tip.git;a=commit;h=84ec6d5796e095e2f8698bd2b5d33849ed26d9e2
Optimized SLUB
random: entropy tweaks are all the rage nowadays

use nonblocking for all.  Read this web page:
http://lwn.net/Articles/489734/ - WIP

commit d19e78c01870bc32e40862b50881bb30fe046933 1 parent 709ec23
maxl authored a day ago voku committed in 12 hours
sched: Disabled Gentle Fair Sleepers for better UI performance
lib/memcopy: use glibc version

the kernel's memcpy and memmove is very inefficient. But the glibc version is
quite fast, in some cases it is 10 times faster than the kernel version. So I
introduce some memory copy macros and functions of the glibc to improve the
kernel version's performance.

The strategy of the memory functions is:
1. Copy bytes until the destination pointer is aligned.
2. Copy words in unrolled loops.  If the source and destination are not
   aligned in the same way, use word memory operations, but shift and merge
   two read words before writing.
3. Copy the few remaining bytes.

Signed-off-by: Miao Xie <miaox*******>
lib/string: use glibc version

the performance of memcpy and memmove of the general version is very
inefficient, this patch improved them.

Signed-off-by: Miao Xie <miaox*******>
fs/sync: Make sync() satisfy many requests with one invocation

Dave Jones reported RCU stalls, overly long hrtimer interrupts, and
amazingly long NMI handlers from a trinity-induced workload involving
lots of concurrent sync() calls (https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/7/23/369).
There are any number of things that one might do to make sync() behave
better under high levels of contention, but it is also the case that
multiple concurrent sync() system calls can be satisfied by a single
sys_sync() invocation.

Given that this situation is reminiscent of rcu_barrier(), this commit
applies the rcu_barrier() approach to sys_sync().  This approach uses
a global mutex and a sequence counter.  The mutex is held across the
sync() operation, which eliminates contention between concurrent sync()
operations.  The counter is incremented at the beginning and end of
each sync() operation, so that it is odd while a sync() operation is in
progress and even otherwise, just like sequence locks.

The code that used to be in sys_sync() is now in do_sync(), and sys_sync()
now handles the concurrency.  The sys_sync() function first takes a
snapshot of the counter, then acquires the mutex, and then takes another
snapshot of the counter.  If the values of the two snapshots indicate that
a full do_sync() executed during the mutex acquisition, the sys_sync()
function releases the mutex and returns ("Our work is done!").  Otherwise,
sys_sync() increments the counter, invokes do_sync(), and increments
the counter again.

This approach allows a single call to do_sync() to satisfy an arbitrarily
large number of sync() system calls, which should eliminate issues due
to large numbers of concurrent invocations of the sync() system call.

Changes since v1 (https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/7/24/683):

o	Add a pair of memory barriers to keep the increments from
	bleeding into the do_sync() code.  (The failure probability
	is insanely low, but when you have several hundred million
	devices running Linux, you can expect several hundred instances
	of one-in-a-million failures.)

o	Actually CC some people who have experience in this area.

Reported-by: Dave Jones <davej@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Cc: Alexander Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
Cc: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
Cc: Curt Wohlgemuth <curtw@google.com>
Cc: Jens Axboe <jaxboe@fusionio.com>
Cc: linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org

Signed-off-by: Paul Reioux <reioux@gmail.com>
mm: Added filesystem dynamic read-ahead (Credits to Chad Gooldman)