Subject: Re: [PATCH v9 1/9] bitops: Introduce the for_each_set_clump8 macro

From: William Breathitt Gray <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 8 Mar 2019 17:57:33 +0900

On Fri, Mar 08, 2019 at 09:31:00AM +0100, Linus Walleij wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 3, 2019 at 8:47 AM William Breathitt Gray
> <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> > This macro iterates for each 8-bit group of bits (clump) with set bits,
> > within a bitmap memory region. For each iteration, "start" is set to the
> > bit offset of the found clump, while the respective clump value is
> > stored to the location pointed by "clump". Additionally, the
> > bitmap_get_value8 and bitmap_set_value8 functions are introduced to
> > respectively get and set an 8-bit value in a bitmap memory region.
> >
> > Suggested-by: Andy Shevchenko <[email-masked]>
> > Suggested-by: Rasmus Villemoes <[email-masked]>
> > Cc: Arnd Bergmann <[email-masked]>
> > Cc: Andrew Morton <[email-masked]>
> > Reviewed-by: Andy Shevchenko <[email-masked]>
> > Reviewed-by: Linus Walleij <[email-masked]>
> > Signed-off-by: William Breathitt Gray <[email-masked]>
> 
> Andrew: would you be OK with this being merged in v5.1?
> 
> If we need to move the code to drivers/gpio that's OK (though
> I think it's generally useful) but I need to know to proceed with
> the William's nice optimization of these drivers.
> 
> Yours,
> Linus Walleij

I was waiting on Andy to suggest some examples out of the GPIO realm,
but he may be under a heavy workload right so I decided to do a quick
search for one.

In drivers/of/unittest.c, there is loop across a bitmap in the
of_unittest_destroy_tracked_overlays function:

	for (id = MAX_UNITTEST_OVERLAYS - 1; id >= 0; id--) {
		if (!(overlay_id_bits[BIT_WORD(id)] & BIT_MASK(id)))
			continue;

This section of code is checking each bit individually, and skipping if
that bit is not set. This looping can be optimized by using the
for_each_set_clump8 macro to skip clumps of nonset bits (not to mention
make the logic of the code much simpler and easier to follow by reducing
the code to a single line):

	for_each_set_clump8(id, clump, overlay_id_bits, MAX_UNITTEST_OVERLAYS-1)

The for_each_set_clump8 macro is not specific to the GPIO subsystem; I
just happen to use it in these GPIO drivers simply because I am most
familar with this section of the kernel (it's where most of my
contributions occur afterall).

Consider this, if I am able to find a use for this macro outside of the
GPIO subsystem within a matter minutes, then there must be some benefit
in allowing the rest of the kernel to use the for_each_set_clump8 macro.
So let's put it in bitops.h rather than restrict it to just the GPIO
subsystem.

William Breathitt Gray

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