RFR: 8370947: Mitigate Neoverse-N1 erratum 1542419 negative impact on GenZGC performance
Evgeny Astigeevich
eastigeevich at openjdk.org
Thu Nov 20 14:58:07 UTC 2025
Arm Neoverse N1 erratum 1542419: "The core might fetch a stale instruction from memory which violates the ordering of instruction fetches". It is fixed in Neoverse N1 r4p1.
Neoverse-N1 implementations mitigate erratum 1542419 with a workaround:
- Disable coherent icache.
- Trap IC IVAU instructions.
- Execute:
- `tlbi vae3is, xzr`
- `dsb sy`
`tlbi vae3is, xzr` invalidates translations for all address spaces (global for address). It waits for all memory accesses using in-scope old translation information to complete before it is considered complete.
As this workaround has significant overhead, Arm Neoverse N1 (MP050) Software Developer Errata Notice version 29.0 suggests:
"Since one TLB inner-shareable invalidation is enough to avoid this erratum, the number of injected TLB invalidations should be minimized in the trap handler to mitigate the performance impact due to this workaround."
This PR introduces a mechanism to defer instruction cache (ICache) invalidation for AArch64 to address the Arm Neoverse N1 erratum 1542419, which causes significant performance overhead if ICache invalidation is performed too frequently. The implementation includes detection of affected Neoverse N1 CPUs and automatic enabling of the workaround for relevant Neoverse N1 revisions.
Changes include:
* Added a new diagnostic JVM flag `NeoverseN1Errata1542419` to enable or disable the workaround for the erratum. The flag is automatically enabled for Neoverse N1 CPUs prior to r4p1, as detected during VM initialization.
* Introduced the `ICacheInvalidationContext` class to manage deferred ICache invalidation, with platform-specific logic for AArch64. This context is used to batch ICache invalidations, reducing performance impact. As the address for icache invalidation is not relevant, we use the nmethod's code start address.
* Provided a default (no-op) implementation for `ICacheInvalidationContext` on platforms where the workaround is not needed, ensuring portability and minimal impact on other architectures.
* Modified barrier patching and relocation logic (`ZBarrierSetAssembler`, `ZNMethod`, `RelocIterator`, and related code) to accept a `defer_icache_invalidation` parameter, allowing ICache invalidation to be deferred and later performed in bulk.
Benchmarking results: Neoverse-N1 r3p1 (Graviton 2)
- Baseline
$ taskset -c 0-3 java -Xbootclasspath/a:./wb.jar -XX:+UnlockDiagnosticVMOptions -XX:-NeoverseN1Errata1542419 -XX:+UseZGC -XX:ZYoungGCThreads=1 -XX:ZOldGCThreads=1 -jar benchmarks.jar org.openjdk.bench.vm.gc.GCPatchingNmethodCost
Benchmark (accessedFieldCount) (methodCount) Mode Cnt Score Error Units
GCPatchingNmethodCost.fullGC 0 5000 avgt 3 73.937 ± 17.764 ms/op
GCPatchingNmethodCost.fullGC 2 5000 avgt 3 648.331 ± 85.773 ms/op
GCPatchingNmethodCost.fullGC 4 5000 avgt 3 1221.186 ± 72.401 ms/op
GCPatchingNmethodCost.fullGC 8 5000 avgt 3 2336.644 ± 446.816 ms/op
GCPatchingNmethodCost.systemGC 0 5000 avgt 3 77.495 ± 11.963 ms/op
GCPatchingNmethodCost.systemGC 2 5000 avgt 3 662.447 ± 231.244 ms/op
GCPatchingNmethodCost.systemGC 4 5000 avgt 3 1217.174 ± 232.325 ms/op
GCPatchingNmethodCost.systemGC 8 5000 avgt 3 2339.458 ± 271.820 ms/op
GCPatchingNmethodCost.youngGC 0 5000 avgt 3 9.955 ± 1.649 ms/op
GCPatchingNmethodCost.youngGC 2 5000 avgt 3 163.623 ± 42.342 ms/op
GCPatchingNmethodCost.youngGC 4 5000 avgt 3 318.399 ± 87.674 ms/op
GCPatchingNmethodCost.youngGC 8 5000 avgt 3 618.169 ± 191.474 ms/op
- Fix
$ taskset -c 0-3 java -Xbootclasspath/a:./wb.jar -XX:+UnlockDiagnosticVMOptions -XX:+NeoverseN1Errata1542419 -XX:+UseZGC -XX:ZYoungGCThreads=1 -XX:ZOldGCThreads=1 -jar benchmarks.jar org.openjdk.bench.vm.gc.GCPatchingNmethodCost
Benchmark (accessedFieldCount) (methodCount) Mode Cnt Score Error Units
GCPatchingNmethodCost.fullGC 0 5000 avgt 3 88.865 ± 19.299 ms/op
GCPatchingNmethodCost.fullGC 2 5000 avgt 3 146.184 ± 11.531 ms/op
GCPatchingNmethodCost.fullGC 4 5000 avgt 3 186.429 ± 16.257 ms/op
GCPatchingNmethodCost.fullGC 8 5000 avgt 3 262.933 ± 13.071 ms/op
GCPatchingNmethodCost.systemGC 0 5000 avgt 3 90.572 ± 14.750 ms/op
GCPatchingNmethodCost.systemGC 2 5000 avgt 3 148.335 ± 21.456 ms/op
GCPatchingNmethodCost.systemGC 4 5000 avgt 3 190.828 ± 12.268 ms/op
GCPatchingNmethodCost.systemGC 8 5000 avgt 3 265.768 ± 46.669 ms/op
GCPatchingNmethodCost.youngGC 0 5000 avgt 3 10.219 ± 0.877 ms/op
GCPatchingNmethodCost.youngGC 2 5000 avgt 3 19.035 ± 2.699 ms/op
GCPatchingNmethodCost.youngGC 4 5000 avgt 3 26.005 ± 2.179 ms/op
GCPatchingNmethodCost.youngGC 8 5000 avgt 3 42.322 ± 85.691 ms/op
-------------
Commit messages:
- Merge branch 'master' into JDK-8370947
- Add deferred icache invalidation to all places; Add JMH microbench
- 8370947: Mitigate Neoverse-N1 erratum 1542419 negative impact on GenZGC performance
Changes: https://git.openjdk.org/jdk/pull/28328/files
Webrev: https://webrevs.openjdk.org/?repo=jdk&pr=28328&range=00
Issue: https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-8370947
Stats: 380 lines in 17 files changed: 340 ins; 4 del; 36 mod
Patch: https://git.openjdk.org/jdk/pull/28328.diff
Fetch: git fetch https://git.openjdk.org/jdk.git pull/28328/head:pull/28328
PR: https://git.openjdk.org/jdk/pull/28328
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