Linux 4.19 Goes Ahead And Makes Lazy TLB Mode Lazier For Small Performance Benefit

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Linux 4.19 Goes Ahead And Makes Lazy TLB Mode Lazier For Small Performance Benefit

Last month I wrote about lazy TLB mode improvements on the way to the mainline kernel and this week the changes were indeed merged for the in-development Linux 4.19 kernel...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-4.19-Lazier-TLB-Mode

[varikonniemi]

1% general efficiency gain is very notable.

[Weasel]

1% general efficiency gain is very notable.

Even if it wasn't, every bit counts, because they add up. When you profile and can't find a bottleneck (especially when idle), it's time to optimize every little bit here and there.

[cj.wijtmans]

what is TLB used for ? i have it disabled.

[smitty3268]

what is TLB used for ? i have it disabled.

TLB = Translation Lookaside Buffer

It's basically a hardware cache for storing virtual memory mappings. So when an app requests a particular memory address, the kernel translates that virtual address to a physical address in the actual RAM. The TLB is just a cache for that, so it's use is increasing performance.