linux/arch
Paul Mackerras 745a14cc26 [POWERPC] Add fast little-endian switch system call
This adds a system call on 64-bit platforms for switching between
little-endian and big-endian modes that is much faster than doing a
prctl call.  This system call is handled as a special case right at
the start of the system call entry code, and because it is a special
case, it uses a system call number which is out of the range of
normal system calls, namely 0x1ebe.

Measurements with lmbench on a 4.2GHz POWER6 showed no measurable
change in the speed of normal system calls with this patch.

Switching endianness with this new system call takes around 60ns on a
4.2GHz POWER6, compared with around 300ns to switch endian mode with a
prctl.  This can provide a significant performance advantage for
emulators for little-endian architectures that want to switch between
big-endian and little-endian mode frequently, e.g. because they are
generating instructions sequences on the fly and they want to run
those sequences in little-endian mode.

The other thing about this system call is that it doesn't clobber as
many registers as a normal system call.  It only clobbers r12.

Signed-off-by: Paul Mackerras <paulus@samba.org>
2008-04-29 15:57:34 +10:00
..
alpha arch/alpha/kernel/traps.c: use time_* macros 2008-04-28 08:58:27 -07:00
arm ARM: always select HAVE_IDE 2008-04-28 23:44:43 +02:00
avr32 atmel_lcdfb: don't initialize a pre-allocated framebuffer 2008-04-28 08:58:38 -07:00
blackfin [Blackfin] arch: add include/boot .gitignore files 2008-04-25 08:29:11 +08:00
cris cris: remove redundant display of free swap space in show_mem() 2008-04-28 08:58:28 -07:00
frv frv si_addr annotations 2008-04-28 10:03:30 -07:00
h8300 Generic semaphore implementation 2008-04-17 10:42:34 -04:00
ia64 ia64 kvm fixes for O=... builds 2008-04-28 10:03:30 -07:00
m32r Generic semaphore implementation 2008-04-17 10:42:34 -04:00
m68k m68k: replace remaining __FUNCTION__ occurrences 2008-04-28 08:58:27 -07:00
m68knommu Generic semaphore implementation 2008-04-17 10:42:34 -04:00
mips Merge branch 'upstream' of git://ftp.linux-mips.org/pub/scm/upstream-linus 2008-04-28 10:51:43 -07:00
mn10300 PCI: remove initial bios sort of PCI devices on x86 2008-04-20 21:46:58 -07:00
parisc mm: have zonelist contains structs with both a zone pointer and zone_idx 2008-04-28 08:58:18 -07:00
powerpc [POWERPC] Add fast little-endian switch system call 2008-04-29 15:57:34 +10:00
ppc [POWERPC] Add strncmp to arch/ppc 2008-04-24 20:57:34 +10:00
s390 KVM: add ioctls to save/store mpstate 2008-04-27 18:21:16 +03:00
sh hotplug-memory: make online_page() common 2008-04-28 08:58:17 -07:00
sparc sparc: Remove old style signal frame support. 2008-04-27 02:26:36 -07:00
sparc64 Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/davem/sparc-2.6 2008-04-28 09:45:57 -07:00
um uml: clean up arch/um/drivers/ubd_kern.c 2008-04-28 08:58:29 -07:00
v850 arch: Remove unnecessary inclusions of asm/semaphore.h 2008-04-18 22:14:49 -04:00
x86 x86_64 vDSO: use initdata 2008-04-28 13:49:35 -07:00
xtensa Generic semaphore implementation 2008-04-17 10:42:34 -04:00
.gitignore arch: Ignore arch/i386 and arch/x86_64 2008-01-19 21:29:39 -08:00
Kconfig Kprobes: indicate kretprobe support in Kconfig 2008-03-04 16:35:11 -08:00