lkml.org 
[lkml]   [2006]   [Apr]   [27]   [last100]   RSS Feed
Views: [wrap][no wrap]   [headers]  [forward] 
 
Messages in this thread
/
Date
From
SubjectRe: Lockless page cache test results


On Thu, 27 Apr 2006, Nick Piggin wrote:
> >
> > Of course, with small files, the actual filename lookup is likely to be the
> > real limiter.
>
> Although that's lockless so it scales. find_get_page will overtake it
> at some point.

filename lookup is only lockless for independent files. You end up getting
the "dentry->d_lock" for a successful lookup in the lookup path, so if you
have multiple threads looking up the same files (or - MUCH more commonly -
directories), you're not going to be lockless.

I don't know how we could improve it. I've several times thought that we
_should_ be able to do the directory lookups under the rcu read lock and
never touch their d_count or d_lock at all, but the locking against
directory renaming depends very intimately on d_lock.

It is _possible_ that we should be able to handle it purely with just
memory ordering rather than depending on d_lock. That would be wonderful.

Of course, we do actually scale pretty damn well already. I'm just saying
that it's not perfect.

See __d_lookup() for details.

Linus
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/

\
 
 \ /
  Last update: 2009-11-18 23:46    [W:0.137 / U:0.212 seconds]
©2003-2020 Jasper Spaans|hosted at Digital Ocean and TransIP|Read the blog|Advertise on this site