While examining holes in percpu section I found this :

c05f5000 D per_cpu__current_task
c05f5000 D __per_cpu_start
c05f5004 D per_cpu__cpu_number
c05f5008 D per_cpu__irq_regs
c05f500c d per_cpu__cpu_devices
c05f5040 D per_cpu__cyc2ns

<Big Hole of about 4000 bytes>

c05f6000 d per_cpu__cpuid4_info
c05f6004 d per_cpu__cache_kobject
c05f6008 d per_cpu__index_kobject

<Big Hole of about 4000 bytes>

c05f7000 D per_cpu__gdt_page

This is because gdt_page is a percpu variable, defined with
a page alignement, and linker is doing its job, two times because of .o
nesting in the build process.

I introduced a new macro DEFINE_PER_CPU_PAGE_ALIGNED() to avoid
wasting this space. All page aligned variables (only one at this time)
are put in a separate
subsection .data.percpu.page_aligned, at the very begining of percpu zone.

Before patch , on a x86_32 machine :

.data.percpu                30232   3227471872
.data.percpu                22168   3227471872

Thats 8064 bytes saved for each CPU.
Signed-off-by: NEric Dumazet <dada1@cosmosbay.com>
Signed-off-by: NIngo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Signed-off-by: NThomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>