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SubjectRe: [RFC PATCH for 4.17 02/21] rseq: Introduce restartable sequences system call (v12)
On Mon, Apr 02, 2018 at 10:03:58AM -0500, Christopher Lameter wrote:
> On Sun, 1 Apr 2018, Alan Cox wrote:
>
> > > Restartable sequences are atomic with respect to preemption
> > > (making it atomic with respect to other threads running on the
> > > same CPU), as well as signal delivery (user-space execution
> > > contexts nested over the same thread).
> >
> > CPU generally means 'big lump with legs on it'. You are not atomic to the
> > same CPU, because that CPU may have 30+ cores with 8 threads per core.
> >
> > It could do with some better terminology (hardware thread, CPU context ?)
>
> Well we call it a "CPU" in the scheduler context I think. We could use
> better terminology throughout the kernel tools and source.

Agreed, it has been "CPU" for "single hardware thread" for a very long
time. People tend to use "core" for "group of hardware threads" and
"socket" for "big lump with legs on it".

> Hardware Execution Context?

Should be even more fun when non-CPU hardware execution contexts show
up in force within each core. ;-)

But the terminology in place for non-CPU hardware execution contexts
should be able to survive that event.

> > > In a typical usage scenario, the thread registering the rseq
> > > structure will be performing loads and stores from/to that
> > > structure. It is however also allowed to read that structure
> > > from other threads. The rseq field updates performed by the
> > > kernel provide relaxed atomicity semantics, which guarantee
> > > that other threads performing relaxed atomic reads of the cpu
> > > number cache will always observe a consistent value.
> >
> > So what happens to your API if the kernel atomics get improved ? You are
> > effectively exporting rseq behaviour from private to public.
>
> There is already a pretty complex coherency model guiding kernel atomics.
> Improvements/changes to that are difficult and the effect will ripple
> throughout the kernel. So I would suggest that these areas of the kernel
> are pretty "petrified" (or written in stone).

I suspect that there are much more pressing areas of confusion in any
case!

Thanx, Paul

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