the distcc farm, showed this with the likelys in the workqueue code: correct incorrect % Function File Line ------- --------- - -------- ---- ---- 96 996253 99 wq_worker_sleeping workqueue.c 703 96 996247 99 wq_worker_waking_up workqueue.c 677 The likely()s in this case were assuming that WORKER_NOT_RUNNING will most likely be false. But this is not the case. The reason is (and shown by adding trace_printks and testing it) that most of the time WORKER_PREP is set. In worker_thread() we have: worker_clr_flags(worker, WORKER_PREP); [ do work stuff ] worker_set_flags(worker, WORKER_PREP, false); (that 'false' means not to wake up an idle worker) The wq_worker_sleeping() is called from schedule when a worker thread is putting itself to sleep. Which happens most of the time outside of that [ do work stuff ]. The wq_worker_waking_up is called by the wakeup worker code, which is also callod outside that [ do work stuff ]. Thus, the likely and unlikely used by those two functions are actually backwards. Remove the annotation and let gcc figure it out. Acked-by: Tejun Heo Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt Signed-off-by: Tejun Heo òÎ,›‘