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    SubjectRe: [PATCH v2 08/11] firewire-sbp-target: Add sbp_login.{c,h}
    On Sat, Mar 03, 2012 at 06:37:22PM +0100, Stefan Richter wrote:
    > On Feb 16 Chris Boot wrote:

    [ . . . ]

    > > I guess I need to protect access to
    > > the entire session really. Possibly even rwlocks due to only the
    > > management processes ever changing anything, but lots of reads during
    > > command handling.
    >
    > The use case for rwlocks is not really the case where infrequent write
    > access meets frequent read access. Rather, the use case is when it is
    > important to reduce or prevent contention between readers.
    >
    > Rwlocks come with their own downsides though. I guess the somewhat
    > costlier lock implementation could counter the benefit of allowing
    > concurrent readers. Or maybe latency spikes around a write access could be
    > an issue.
    >
    > I believe I have read somewhere that one should rather use a simple
    > spinlock unless exhaustive tests prove that an rwlock really performs
    > better. Furthermore, in many if not all use cases of rwlocks, RCU is
    > available as another alternative. RCU comes with its own set of downsides
    > though, for example not being as well and widely understood by programmers
    > compared to locking, being less easy to debug (may have improved
    > recently), and posing some challenges to RT-PREEMPT kernels.

    The preemptible RCU implementations (TREE_PREEMPT_RCU and TINY_PREEMPT_RCU)
    handle the -rt tree.

    > AFAIU the above considerations cannot be applied 100 % to able-to-sleep
    > reader-writer locks, i.e. the kernel's rwsem. Still, the use case of an
    > rwsem (in contrast to a mutex) is not particularly where a datum is rarely
    > written and often read, but where it is desirable to let multiple readers
    > not block each other.
    >
    > [Somebody correct me where I'm wrong.]

    And you can use SRCU if readers need to block.

    That said, even I agree that RCU is not always the right tool for the job.

    ;-), Paul

    > PS, I cloned your git tree not long ago, but again various distractions
    > kept me from having a broader look at your code...
    > --
    > Stefan Richter
    > -=====-===-- --== ---==
    > http://arcgraph.de/sr/
    > --
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