Re: [PATCH 2/2] mutex: Apply adaptive spinning on mutex_trylock()

[Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>]

* Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org> wrote:

> On Fri, 2011-03-25 at 16:50 +0300, Andrey Kuzmin wrote:
> > On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 4:12 PM, Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org> wrote:
> > > On Fri, 2011-03-25 at 14:13 +0300, Andrey Kuzmin wrote:
> > >> Turning try_lock into indefinitely spinning one breaks its semantics,
> > >> so deadlock is to be expected. But what's wrong in this scenario if
> > >> try_lock spins a bit before giving up?
> > >
> > > Because that will cause this scenario to spin that "little longer"
> > > always, and introduce latencies that did not exist before. Either the
> > > solution does not break this scenario, or it should not go in.
> > 
> > Broken semantics and extra latency are two separate issues. If the
> > former is fixed, the latter is easily handled by introducing new
> > mutex_trylock_spin call that lets one either stick to existing
> > behavior (try/fail) or choose a new one where latency penalty is
> > justified by locking patterns.
> > 
> 
> For those wanting a more RT deterministic OS, I will argue against
> latency penalties.

Later mails from Tejun suggest that the benchmark results are varied, and that 
it's not a clear win after all.

It's possible that if useless spinning is introduced then that might explain 
such workload variations. I.e. it's not really 'latencies' but 'unnecessary 
overhead spent spinning' - and also 'extra non-deterministic noise' - none of 
which help consistent performance.

Thanks,

	Ingo