Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 7 Jan 2010 01:19:55 -0500 | From | Mathieu Desnoyers <> | Subject | Re: [RFC PATCH] introduce sys_membarrier(): process-wide memory barrier |
| |
* Steven Rostedt (rostedt@goodmis.org) wrote: > On Wed, 2010-01-06 at 23:40 -0500, Mathieu Desnoyers wrote: > > Here is an implementation of a new system call, sys_membarrier(), which > > executes a memory barrier on all threads of the current process. > > > > It aims at greatly simplifying and enhancing the current signal-based > > liburcu userspace RCU synchronize_rcu() implementation. > > (found at http://lttng.org/urcu) > > > > Nice. > > > Both the signal-based and the sys_membarrier userspace RCU schemes > > permit us to remove the memory barrier from the userspace RCU > > rcu_read_lock() and rcu_read_unlock() primitives, thus significantly > > accelerating them. These memory barriers are replaced by compiler > > barriers on the read-side, and all matching memory barriers on the > > write-side are turned into an invokation of a memory barrier on all > > active threads in the process. By letting the kernel perform this > > synchronization rather than dumbly sending a signal to every process > > threads (as we currently do), we diminish the number of unnecessary wake > > ups and only issue the memory barriers on active threads. Non-running > > threads do not need to execute such barrier anyway, because these are > > implied by the scheduler context switches. > > > > To explain the benefit of this scheme, let's introduce two example threads: > > > > Thread A (non-frequent, e.g. executing liburcu synchronize_rcu()) > > Thread B (frequent, e.g. executing liburcu rcu_read_lock()/rcu_read_unlock()) > > > > In a scheme where all smp_mb() in thread A synchronize_rcu() are > > ordering memory accesses with respect to smp_mb() present in > > rcu_read_lock/unlock(), we can change all smp_mb() from > > synchronize_rcu() into calls to sys_membarrier() and all smp_mb() from > > rcu_read_lock/unlock() into compiler barriers "barrier()". > > > > Before the change, we had, for each smp_mb() pairs: > > > > Thread A Thread B > > prev mem accesses prev mem accesses > > smp_mb() smp_mb() > > follow mem accesses follow mem accesses > > > > After the change, these pairs become: > > > > Thread A Thread B > > prev mem accesses prev mem accesses > > sys_membarrier() barrier() > > follow mem accesses follow mem accesses > > > > As we can see, there are two possible scenarios: either Thread B memory > > accesses do not happen concurrently with Thread A accesses (1), or they > > do (2). > > > > 1) Non-concurrent Thread A vs Thread B accesses: > > > > Thread A Thread B > > prev mem accesses > > sys_membarrier() > > follow mem accesses > > prev mem accesses > > barrier() > > follow mem accesses > > > > In this case, thread B accesses will be weakly ordered. This is OK, > > because at that point, thread A is not particularly interested in > > ordering them with respect to its own accesses. > > > > 2) Concurrent Thread A vs Thread B accesses > > > > Thread A Thread B > > prev mem accesses prev mem accesses > > sys_membarrier() barrier() > > follow mem accesses follow mem accesses > > > > In this case, thread B accesses, which are ensured to be in program > > order thanks to the compiler barrier, will be "upgraded" to full > > smp_mb() thanks to the IPIs executing memory barriers on each active > > system threads. Each non-running process threads are intrinsically > > serialized by the scheduler. > > > > The current implementation simply executes a memory barrier in an IPI > > handler on each active cpu. Going through the hassle of taking run queue > > locks and checking if the thread running on each online CPU belongs to > > the current thread seems more heavyweight than the cost of the IPI > > itself (not measured though). > > > > > I don't think you need to grab any locks. Doing an rcu_read_lock() > should prevent tasks from disappearing (since destruction of tasks use > RCU). You may still need to grab the tasklist_lock under read_lock(). > > So what you could do, is find each task that is a thread of the calling > task, and then just check task_rq(task)->curr != task. Just send the > IPI's to those tasks that pass the test.
I guess you mean
"then just check task_rq(task)->curr == task" ... ?
> > If the task->rq changes, or the task->rq->curr changes, and makes the > condition fail (or even pass), the events that cause those changes are > probably good enough than needing to call smp_mb();
I see your point.
This would probably be good for machines with very large number of cpus and without IPI broadcast support, running processes with only few threads. I really start to think that we should have some way to compare the number of threads belonging to a process and choose between the broadcast IPI and the per-cpu IPI depending if we are over or under an arbitrary threshold.
Thanks,
Mathieu
> > -- Steve > > > > > The system call number is only assigned for x86_64 in this RFC patch. > >
-- Mathieu Desnoyers OpenPGP key fingerprint: 8CD5 52C3 8E3C 4140 715F BA06 3F25 A8FE 3BAE 9A68
| |