Hi Alan,
On 07/08/2017 06:21 PM, Alan Stern wrote:
Pardon me for barging in, but I found this whole interchange extremely
confusing...
On Sat, 8 Jul 2017, Ingo Molnar wrote:
* Paul E. McKenney <paul...@linux.vnet.ibm.com> wrote:
On Sat, Jul 08, 2017 at 10:35:43AM +0200, Ingo Molnar wrote:
* Manfred Spraul <manf...@colorfullife.com> wrote:
Hi Ingo,
On 07/07/2017 10:31 AM, Ingo Molnar wrote:
There's another, probably just as significant advantage:
queued_spin_unlock_wait()
is 'read-only', while spin_lock()+spin_unlock() dirties the lock cache line. On
any bigger system this should make a very measurable difference - if
spin_unlock_wait() is ever used in a performance critical code path.
At least for ipc/sem:
Dirtying the cacheline (in the slow path) allows to remove a smp_mb() in the
hot path.
So for sem_lock(), I either need a primitive that dirties the cacheline or
sem_lock() must continue to use spin_lock()/spin_unlock().
This statement doesn't seem to make sense. Did Manfred mean to write
"smp_mb()" instead of "spin_lock()/spin_unlock()"?
Option 1:
fastpath:
spin_lock(local_lock)
smp_mb(); [[1]]
smp_load_acquire(global_flag);
slow path:
global_flag = 1;
smp_mb();
<spin_unlock_wait_without_cacheline_dirtying>
Option 2:
fastpath:
spin_lock(local_lock);
smp_load_acquire(global_flag)
slow path:
global_flag = 1;
spin_lock(local_lock);spin_unlock(local_lock).
Rational:
The ACQUIRE from spin_lock is at the read of local_lock, not at the write.
i.e.: Without the smp_mb() at [[1]], the CPU can do:
read local_lock;
read global_flag;
write local_lock;
For Option 2, the smp_mb() is not required, because fast path and slow
path acquire the same lock.
Technically you could use spin_trylock()+spin_unlock() and avoid the lock
acquire
spinning on spin_unlock() and get very close to the slow path performance of a
pure cacheline-dirtying behavior.
This is even more confusing. Did Ingo mean to suggest using
"spin_trylock()+spin_unlock()" in place of "spin_lock()+spin_unlock()"
could provide the desired ordering guarantee without delaying other
CPUs that may try to acquire the lock? That seems highly questionable.
I agree :-)
--
Manfred
