Re: [PATCH, RFC] v7 scalable classic RCU implementation

["Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>]

On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 06:21:06PM +0100, Manfred Spraul wrote:
> Paul E. McKenney wrote:
>>> How do you intend to handle nohz cpus?
>>
>> In which variant of RCU?  My current thought is to apply the rcutree.c
>> version to rcupreempt.c.  If rcuclassic.c can be dropped, my thought
>> would be to leave it alone -- it is unnecessarily awakening CPUs, but
>> this is a non-fatal issue.
>>   
> For rcuclassic.

If we were to keep rcuclassic for any length of time, I would modify
rcu_pending() and rcu_check_callbacks() to invoke force_quiescent_state()
if there was a longish (say 3-5 jiffies) delay in the RCU grace period.

> As far as  I can see, rcuclassic treats nohz cpus as always outside 
> rcu_read_lock():
> rcu_start_batch() contains
> >
> >                cpus_andnot(rcp->cpumask, cpu_online_map, nohz_cpu_mask);
> >
> As soon as all cpus from rcp->cpumask reported a grace period, the 
> callbacks are called.
> That a bug, therefore I would drop rcuclassic as soon as rcutree is merged.

Good point, I had forgotten that issue.  Making this modification would
cause the resulting rcuclassic to be just as suspect as is rcutree,
I suppose.

A strong argument for moving to rcutree.c quickly rather than slowly,
I must admit!

							Thanx, Paul