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From: will.deacon@arm•com (Will Deacon)
To: linux-arm-kernel@lists•infradead.org
Subject: [PATCH] arm64: spinlock: serialise spin_unlock_wait against concurrent lockers
Date: Thu, 3 Dec 2015 16:32:43 +0000	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20151203163243.GI11337@arm.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20151203132839.GA3816@twins.programming.kicks-ass.net>

Hi Peter, Paul,

Firstly, thanks for writing that up. I agree that you have something
that can work in theory, but see below.

On Thu, Dec 03, 2015 at 02:28:39PM +0100, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 02, 2015 at 04:11:41PM -0800, Paul E. McKenney wrote:
> > This looks architecture-agnostic to me:
> > 
> > a.	TSO systems have smp_mb__after_unlock_lock() be a no-op, and
> > 	have a read-only implementation for spin_unlock_wait().
> > 
> > b.	Small-scale weakly ordered systems can also have
> > 	smp_mb__after_unlock_lock() be a no-op, but must instead
> > 	have spin_unlock_wait() acquire the lock and immediately 
> > 	release it, or some optimized implementation of this.
> > 
> > c.	Large-scale weakly ordered systems are required to define
> > 	smp_mb__after_unlock_lock() as smp_mb(), but can have a
> > 	read-only implementation of spin_unlock_wait().
> 
> This would still require all relevant spin_lock() sites to be annotated
> with smp_mb__after_unlock_lock(), which is going to be a painful (no
> warning when done wrong) exercise and expensive (added MBs all over the
> place).
> 
> But yes, I think the proposal is technically sound, just not quite sure
> how far we'll want to push this.

When I said that the solution isn't architecture-agnostic, I was referring
to the fact that spin_unlock_wait acts as a LOCK operation on all
architectures other than those using case (c) above. You've resolved
this by requiring smp_mb__after_unlock_lock() after every LOCK, but I
share Peter's concerns that this isn't going to work in practice because:

  1. The smp_mb__after_unlock_lock additions aren't necessarily in the
     code where the spin_unlock_wait() is being added, so it's going to
     require a lot of diligence for developers to get this right

  2. Only PowerPC is going to see the (very occassional) failures, so
     testing this is nigh on impossible :(

  3. We've now made the kernel memory model even more difficult to
     understand, so people might not even bother with this addition

Will

  reply	other threads:[~2015-12-03 16:32 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 37+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2015-11-27 11:44 [PATCH] arm64: spinlock: serialise spin_unlock_wait against concurrent lockers Will Deacon
2015-11-30 15:58 ` Peter Zijlstra
2015-11-30 18:21   ` Paul E. McKenney
2015-12-01 16:40   ` Will Deacon
2015-12-03  0:11     ` Paul E. McKenney
2015-12-03 13:28       ` Peter Zijlstra
2015-12-03 16:32         ` Will Deacon [this message]
2015-12-03 17:22           ` Paul E. McKenney
2015-12-04  9:21             ` Peter Zijlstra
2015-12-04 16:07               ` Paul E. McKenney
2015-12-04 16:24                 ` Will Deacon
2015-12-04 16:44                   ` Paul E. McKenney
2015-12-06  7:37                     ` Boqun Feng
2015-12-06 19:23                       ` Paul E. McKenney
2015-12-06 23:28                         ` Boqun Feng
2015-12-07  0:00                           ` Paul E. McKenney
2015-12-07  0:45                             ` Boqun Feng
2015-12-07 10:34                               ` Peter Zijlstra
2015-12-07 15:45                                 ` Paul E. McKenney
2015-12-08  8:42                                   ` Boqun Feng
2015-12-08 19:17                                     ` Paul E. McKenney
2015-12-09  6:43                                       ` Boqun Feng
2015-12-04  9:36             ` Peter Zijlstra
2015-12-04 16:13               ` Paul E. McKenney
2015-12-07  2:12                 ` Michael Ellerman
2015-12-06  8:16             ` Boqun Feng
2015-12-06 19:27               ` Paul E. McKenney
2015-12-07  0:26                 ` Boqun Feng
2015-12-11  8:09                   ` Boqun Feng
2015-12-11  9:46                     ` Will Deacon
2015-12-11 12:20                       ` Boqun Feng
2015-12-11 13:42                       ` Paul E. McKenney
2015-12-11 13:54                         ` Will Deacon
2015-12-01  0:40 ` Boqun Feng
2015-12-01 16:32   ` Will Deacon
2015-12-02  9:40     ` Boqun Feng
2015-12-02 11:16       ` Boqun Feng

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