On Mon, 19 Dec 2005, Russell King wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 18, 2005 at 08:48:15PM -0500, Nicolas Pitre wrote:
> > On Sun, 18 Dec 2005, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > > I agree, if arm interrupt disables are fast. For example, on x86 (where
> > > this isn't needed, because you can have an "interrupt-safe" decrement by
> > > just having it as a single instruction, even if it isn't SMP-safe),
> > > disabling and re-enabling interrupts is just one instruction each, but
> > > the
> > > combination is usually something like 50+ cycles. So if this was an issue
> > > on x86, we'd definitely care.
> > >
> > > But if you don't think it's a big issue on ARM, it just doesn't matter.
> >
> > Let's see. The core of the uncontended down() on ARM looks like this:
> >
> > mrs r0, cpsr
> > orr r1, r0, #128
> > msr cpsr_c, r1
> > ldr r1, [%0]
> > subs r1, r1, #1
> > str r1, [%0]
> > msr cpsr_c, r0
> > blt __contention
> >
> > On a 624MHz ARMv5 processor I can execute this sequence approximately
> > 266100 times in 10 ms, which means approx 23 cycles. The uncontended
> > up() is the same except the sub is replaced by an add.
> >
> > Removing the interrupt masking/unmasking reduces the above sequence to 4
> > instructions using 6 cycles.
>
> I think you're comparing applies with oranges here - you measured the
> above function by executing it, and the reduced version by some other
> method (you appear to be absolutely certain that it's 6 cycles, but
> the previous was approximate).
They were _all_ measured execution times (I learned not to trust the
manual for those). Here's the boring details in case you didn't trust
me:
The above 6 cycles was deduced from executing the given sequence of
instructions 1014100 times within 10 ms at 624 MHz.
> > Now if we consider simple mutexes, the core of it becomes this on ARM:
> >
> > mov r0, #1
> > swp r1, r0, [%0]
> > cmp r1, #0
> > bne __contention
> >
> > The above takes 8 cycles. It uses 4 instructions, and it could even be
> > reduced to 3 when gcc's cse optimization can find a register that
> > already contains the value 1 (then using only 7 cycles). It is
> > interrupt safe. It is preemption safe. It is small.
And for completeness: 762700 times within 10 ms at 624 MHz.
> That's over-simplified, and is the easy bit. Now work out how you handle
> the unlock operation.
I exposed that in a previous post in this thread already.
> You don't know whether the lock is contended or not in the unlock path,
> so you always have to do the "wake up" thing. (You can't rely on the
> value of the lock since another thread may well be between this swp
> instruction and entering the __contention function. Hence you can't
> use the value of the lock to determine whether there's anyone sleeping
> on it.)
No. For simplicity in this mail I only provided the inline portion of
the mutex. Let me provide again the __contention part which should be
out of line:
__contention:
mov r0, #2 @ 2 = contended lock flag
swp r1, r0, [%0] @ upgrade the lock, get current value
cmp r1, #0 @ has it just been unlocked?
moveq pc, lr @ if so we now own it.
stmfd sp!, {r2, r3, ip, lr} @ save whatever regs (needs %0 too)
bl __sleep
ldmfd sp!, {r2, r3, ip, lr}
mov r0, #1 @ try to lock again
swp r1, r0, [%0] @ and get current state
cmp r1, #0 @ if it was locked again
bne __contention @ then we loop again
mov pc, lr @ otherwise we own it at last
Note that it needs task state and wait queue handling added which means
that part should probably have a C helper like the current semaphore
implementation. But you should have the basic idea now.
> Therefore, I suspect that while the lock may be faster, the unlock
> won't be.
Not at all. The inlined unlock goes like this:
mov r0, #0 @ 0 = unlock flag
swp r1, r0, [%0] @ unlock and get current state
cmp r1, #2 @ was it contended?
bleq __wake_up @ if so wake up one thread
Again 4 instructions (possibly 3 if cse is possible) and therefore with
the same 7-8 cycle cost.
The only issue has to do with the fact that the lock might have been
unlocked right before we go to upgrade it to contended. We already
catch that case since by locking the mutex with the contended flag we
effectively own it at that point. But then a superfluous wake-up will
be done even if there is no contention anymore. But as you see this
kind of false contention is harmless and should be extremely rare (the
window for it is really small).
Nicolas
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