vmstat's entries type

[John Baldwin]

On Sunday 23 July 2006 20:03, Sten Daniel Sørsdal wrote:
> sthaug at nethelp.no wrote:
> >>> One approach that we could use for 64-bit counters would be to just
> >>> use 32-bits one, and poll them for overflow and bump an overflow
> >>> count.  This assumes that the 32-bit counters overflow much less often
> >>> than the polling interval, and easily triples the amount of storage
> >>> for each of them...  It is ugly :-(
> >>>
> >> What's wrong with the add+adc (asm) approach found on any i386?
> > 
> > Presumably the fact that add + adc isn't an atomic operation. So if
> > you want to guarantee 64 bit consistency, you need locking or similar.
> > 
> 
> Would it not be necessary to do this locking anyway?
> I don't see how polling for overflow would help this consistency.
> Are both suggestions insufficient?

I actually think that add + adc is ok for the case of incrementing simple 
counters.  You can even do 'inc ; addc $0'

-- 
John Baldwin