On Sat, Jan 17, 2009 at 03:09:16PM +0100, Leon Woestenberg wrote:
> Hello,
>
> On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 3:25 PM, Peter Teoh <[email protected]> wrote:
> > An incredible good technical article:
> >
> > http://lwn.net/Articles/305782/
> >
> > May be someone would like to summarize it in 3 or 4 sentences?
> >
> Uhh, impossible. My lousy attempt, I have CC: Paul as the designer and author:
>
> Read-copy update (RCU) is a novel synchronization mechanism added to
> the Linux kernel that allows readers to execute concurrently with
> writers. The classic RCU mechanism scales well up to systems with
> hundreds of processors, but does not scale well to emerging larger
> multi-core systems as there is a global lock involved that must be
> acquired by each CPU. Also, CPUs are woken up regularly, even if they
> sit idle. A new hierarchical implementation of RCU reduces lock
> contention and avoids unnecessarily awakening sleeping CPUs. Design by
> Paul McKenney.
Well done! I doubt that I could do better in 3-4 sentences.
The best introduction to RCU that I know of is the three-part
LWN series:
http://lwn.net/Articles/262464/ (What is RCU, Fundamentally?)
http://lwn.net/Articles/263130/ (What is RCU's Usage?)
http://lwn.net/Articles/264090/ (What is RCU's API?)
Although this series is a great improvement over earlier documentation,
I am sure that there is ample room for further improvement, and would
welcome thoughts on its shortcomings and on how it could be improved.
Thanx, Paul
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