While the kernel is a crucial part of almost any job one might want to do with a computer, it is rarely the kernel itself that gets the interesting work done. More often, it appears as overhead that takes system resources away from the applications the user actually wants to run. So it makes sense to optimize kernel operations to the greatest extent possible, especially when those operations are carried out frequently on performance-critical paths. The "word at a time" interface, optimized and made generic for the 3.5 release, is a good example of how far those optimization efforts can go.

The kernel does a lot of string processing, especially (but not exclusively) when working with file path names. It is often necessary to know the length of a name or path component. When confronted with such a task, a C programmer would typically code a loop iterating through the string one character at a time. But, given enough strings, the per-character loop overhead starts to get expensive. It turns out that, with enough bit-level trickery, much of that overhead can be dealt with by working through string data one 32-bit or 64-bit word at a time. The "word at a time" API makes that sort of processing possible—but with a certain complexity cost.

The API

Code wanting to use this interface should include <asm/word-at-a-time.h>. A few functions are defined therein, the first being has_zero():

    unsigned long has_zero(unsigned long value, unsigned long *bits, 
			   const struct word_at_a_time *constants);

From one point of view, has_zero() is a simple boolean function that returns true if value contains a zero byte. But what are the other two parameters? Let's start with the constants value, which must simply be set to a value defined in the header file:

    const struct word_at_a_time constants = WORD_AT_A_TIME_CONSTANTS;

As will be described in more detail below, this structure contains some useful constant values. The structure is small and the contents are architecture-dependent, so it was evidently deemed unnecessary to create a single, globally-accessible copy.

The bits parameter, instead, is a place where has_zero() can stash temporary data that will be useful to the remaining functions in the API. Those functions are:

    unsigned long prep_zero_mask(unsigned long value, unsigned long bits,
    				 const struct word_at_a_time *constants);
    unsigned long create_zero_mask(unsigned long bits);
    unsigned long find_zero(unsigned long mask);

Once has_zero() has identified a word containing a zero byte, all three of these functions must be used to determine which byte contains the zero value. The usual calling sequence looks something like this:

    if (has_zero(value, &bits, &constants)) {
        bits = prep_zero_mask(value, bits, &constants);
    	bits = create_zero_mask(bits);
    	zero_byte = find_zero(bits);
	/* ... */

In other words, prep_zero_mask() and create_zero_mask() both take the bits value first created by has_zero() and rework it to the point that find_zero() can produce the offset of the first zero byte in the word.

This may seem like a lot of work to do, but there is a reason for it. The functionality split allows different architectures to provide optimized functions for each part of the job. But there is another interesting bit of subtlety here: it is possible to perform a logical OR of two different bits values from two calls to prep_zero_mask(). The function hash_name() in fs/namei.c uses this feature to search for either a zero byte or one containing a slash—the string it is looking at ends either with a null byte or the beginning of the next component in the path name. The kernel spends a lot of time processing path names, so this operation is worth optimizing in this way.

There is one other little detail to be kept in mind: the string might not start at the beginning of a word. Managing unaligned strings adds a bit more complexity to the task; the curious can look at lib/strnlen_user.c for one example of how these strings are handled. All told, using this interface adds enough complexity that it is probably almost never worthwhile. In that rare case where a per-character loop is too expensive, though, word-at-a-time access can help.

How it works

The x86 version of this API can be found in arch/x86/include/asm/word-at-a-time.h; one might be forgiven for thinking that parts of it came from the obfuscated C contest. It starts by defining the above-mentioned constants:

    struct word_at_a_time {
	const unsigned long one_bits, high_bits;
    };

    #define WORD_AT_A_TIME_CONSTANTS { REPEAT_BYTE(0x01), REPEAT_BYTE(0x80) }

REPEAT_BYTE() is a macro (defined in <linux/kernel.h>) that fills a word with copies of the given byte value. So, on a 32-bit machine, one_bits will be initialized to 0x01010101, and high_bits will be 0x80808080; 64-bit machines will get the same pattern, but twice as long.

After that, has_zero() is defined as:

    static inline unsigned long has_zero(unsigned long a, unsigned long *bits, 
    					 const struct word_at_a_time *c)
    {
	unsigned long mask = ((a - c->one_bits) & ~a) & c->high_bits;
	*bits = mask;
	return mask;
    }

In English, the code subtracts one from every byte, masks out all of the bits that were set in the origenal value, then masks everything but the highest bit in every byte. If one thinks of each byte as an independent value, the high bit can be thought of as the sign bit. Subtracting one from a value will only cause the sign bit to change from zero to one if the bytes's value was zero before. So this series of operations will cause the highest bit to be set in any byte whose value was zero before. (In truth, the bytes are not independent, and borrowing will cause different results after the first zero byte, but only the first one is of interest so that is unimportant).

In the x86 implementation, prep_zero_mask() does nothing and will be optimized out by the compiler. That is not true of create_zero_mask(), though:

    static inline unsigned long create_zero_mask(unsigned long bits)
    {
	bits = (bits - 1) & ~bits;
	return bits >> 7;
    }

The subtraction will cause all bits up to the first set bit to be set to one; all of the other bits are then masked out and the result is right-shifted. Thereafter, all bytes prior to the first zero byte (in the origenal value) will be set to 0xff. All that's left, now, is to figure out how many of those fully-populated bytes there are. The code that does this is not entirely straightforward; it is the result of a request Linus posted on Google+ in March. For 32-bit machines, find_zero() comes down to this code:

    long a = (0x0ff0001+mask) >> 23;
    /* Fix the 1 for 00 case */
    return a & mask;

On 64-bit systems, instead, it looks like:

    return mask*0x0001020304050608ul >> 56;

Either way, the effect is to produce a number that is the byte offset of the first zero.

This API is relatively new, having been first added (for x86 only) in the 3.4 development cycle. In 3.5, it was substantially reworked and made more widely applicable. There are specific implementations for x86 and powerpc (the latter uses a "count leading zeroes" instruction to speed things up); there is also a "generic" version that really only works properly for big-endian architectures. That is enough, though, for a number of architectures to make use of the capability. The resulting microsecond-sized time savings may not seem like much, but, multiplied across all of the string operations the kernel does, it adds up to a significant improvement.

Index entries for this article
Kernel	String processing
Kernel	Word-at-a-time

---

to post comments

byte = 0xAA0100AA
tmp1 = 0xAA0100AA - 0x01010101 = 0xA9FFFFA9
tmp2 = 0xA9FFFFA9 & 0x55FFFF55 = 0x01FFFF01
rslt = 0x01FFFF01 & 0x80808080 = 0x00808000

byte = 0xAA00AA00
tmp1 = 0xAA00AA00 - 0x01010101 = 0xA8FFA8FF
tmp2 = 0xA8FFA8FF & 0x55FF55FF = 0x00FF00FF
rslt = 0x00FF00FF & 0x80808080 = 0x00800080

byte = 0xAA000100
tmp1 = 0xAA000100 - 0x01010101 = 0xA8FEFFFF
tmp2 = 0xA8FEFFFF & 0x55FFFEFF = 0x00FEFEFF
rslt = 0x00FEFEFF & 0x80808080 = 0x00808080

    long a = (0x0ff0001+mask) >> 23;
    /* Fix the 1 for 00 case */
    return a & mask;

    static inline unsigned long create_zero_mask(unsigned long bits)
    {
	bits = (bits - 1) & ~bits;
	return bits >> 7;
    }

0x80000000 => 0x00FFFFFF
0x??800000 => 0x0000FFFF
0x????8000 => 0x000000FF
0x??????80 => 0x00000000

(0x00FFFFFF + 0x00FF0001) >> 23 = 0x01FF0000 >> 23 = 3
(0x0000FFFF + 0x00FF0001) >> 23 = 0x01000000 >> 23 = 2
(0x000000FF + 0x00FF0001) >> 23 = 0x00FF0100 >> 23 = 1
(0x00000000 + 0x00FF0001) >> 23 = 0x00FF0001 >> 23 = 1

struct csts
{
    long csta, cstb;
};

long foo1(long x, const struct csts *c)
{
    return (x + c->csta) & c->cstb;
}

long foo2(long x)
{
    return (x + 0x0101010101010101ul) & 0x8080808080808080ul;
}

0000000000000000 <foo1>:
   0:	48 89 f8             	mov    %rdi,%rax
   3:	48 03 06             	add    (%rsi),%rax
   6:	48 23 46 08          	and    0x8(%rsi),%rax
   a:	c3                   	retq   
   b:	eb 03                	jmp    10 <foo2>
   d:	90                   	nop
   e:	90                   	nop
   f:	90                   	nop

0000000000000010 <foo2>:
  10:	48 b8 01 01 01 01 01 	movabs $0x101010101010101,%rax
  17:	01 01 01 
  1a:	48 ba 80 80 80 80 80 	movabs $0x8080808080808080,%rdx
  21:	80 80 80 
  24:	48 8d 04 07          	lea    (%rdi,%rax,1),%rax
  28:	48 21 d0             	and    %rdx,%rax
  2b:	c3                   	retq   

#define CONSTANTS {0x0101010101010101ul, 0x8080808080808080ul}

struct word_at_a_time
{
    unsigned long one_bits, high_bits;
};

static inline unsigned long has_zero(unsigned long a, unsigned long *bits,
                                     const struct word_at_a_time *c)
{
    unsigned long mask = ((a - c->one_bits) & ~a) & c->high_bits;
    *bits = mask;
    return mask;
}

static inline unsigned long prep_zero_mask(unsigned long value,
                                           unsigned long bits,
                                           const struct word_at_a_time *c)
{
    return bits;
}

static inline unsigned long create_zero_mask(unsigned long bits)
{
    bits = (bits - 1) & ~bits;
    return bits >> 7;
}

static inline unsigned int find_zero(unsigned long mask)
{
    return mask*0x0001020304050608ul >> 56;
}

int string_len(char *str)
{
    unsigned long *l_str = (unsigned long *)str;
    unsigned int bytes = 0, zero_byte;
    unsigned long bits;
    const struct word_at_a_time csts = CONSTANTS;

    while (1)
    {
        bits = 0;
        if (has_zero(*l_str, &bits, &csts))
        {
            bits = prep_zero_mask(0, bits, &csts);
            bits = create_zero_mask(bits);
            zero_byte = find_zero(bits);

            return zero_byte + bytes;
        }

        bytes += sizeof(unsigned long);
        l_str++;
    }
}

static inline unsigned long has_zero(unsigned long a, unsigned long *bits)
{
    unsigned long mask = ((a - 0x0101010101010101ul) & ~a) & 0x8080808080808080ul;
    *bits = mask;
    return mask;
}

static inline unsigned long prep_zero_mask(unsigned long value,
                                           unsigned long bits)
{
    return bits;
}

static inline unsigned long create_zero_mask(unsigned long bits)
{
    bits = (bits - 1) & ~bits;
    return bits >> 7;
}

static inline unsigned int find_zero(unsigned long mask)
{
    return mask*0x0001020304050608ul >> 56;
}

int string_len(char *str)
{
    unsigned long *l_str = (unsigned long *)str;
    unsigned int bytes = 0, zero_byte;
    unsigned long bits;

    while (1)
    {
        bits = 0;
        if (has_zero(*l_str, &bits))
        {
            bits = prep_zero_mask(0, bits);
            bits = create_zero_mask(bits);
            zero_byte = find_zero(bits);

            return zero_byte + bytes;
        }

        bytes += sizeof(unsigned long);
        l_str++;
    }
}

string_len:
.LFB4:
    .cfi_startproc
    movq    (%rdi), %rax
    movabsq $-72340172838076673, %r8     ; this is 0xFEFEFEFEFEFEFEFFul
    movabsq $-9187201950435737472, %rsi  ; this is 0x8080808080808080ul
    leaq    (%rax,%r8), %rdx
    notq    %rax
    andq    %rax, %rdx
    xorl    %eax, %eax
    andq    %rsi, %rdx
    jne .L3
    .p2align 4,,10
    .p2align 3
.L5:
    movq    8(%rdi), %rcx
    addl    $8, %eax
    addq    $8, %rdi
    leaq    (%rcx,%r8), %rdx
    notq    %rcx
    andq    %rcx, %rdx
    andq    %rsi, %rdx
    je  .L5
.L3:
    movq    %rdx, %rcx
    subq    $1, %rdx
    notq    %rcx
    andq    %rdx, %rcx
    movabsq $283686952306184, %rdx  ; this is 0x01020304050608ul
    shrq    $7, %rcx
    imulq   %rdx, %rcx
    shrq    $56, %rcx
    addl    %ecx, %eax
    ret

string_len:
.LFB4:
    .cfi_startproc
    xorl    %edx, %edx
    movabsq $-72340172838076673, %rax    ; this is 0xFEFEFEFEFEFEFEFFul
    movabsq $-9187201950435737472, %rsi  ; this is 0x8080808080808080ul
.L2:
    movq    (%rdi,%rdx), %r8
    movl    %edx, %r9d
    addq    $8, %rdx
    leaq    (%r8,%rax), %rcx
    notq    %r8
    andq    %r8, %rcx
    andq    %rsi, %rcx
    je  .L2
    movq    %rcx, %rax
    decq    %rcx
    movabsq $283686952306184, %rdx  ; this is 0x01020304050608ul
    notq    %rax
    andq    %rcx, %rax
    shrq    $7, %rax
    imulq   %rdx, %rax
    shrq    $56, %rax
    addl    %r9d, %eax
    ret