Re: [PATCH v2 5/5] psi: introduce psi monitor

[Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>]

On Wed, Jan 16, 2019 at 02:17:28PM -0500, Johannes Weiner wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 16, 2019 at 09:39:13AM -0800, Suren Baghdasaryan wrote:
> > On Wed, Jan 16, 2019 at 5:24 AM Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > On Mon, Jan 14, 2019 at 11:30:12AM -0800, Suren Baghdasaryan wrote:
> > > > For memory ordering (which Johannes also pointed out) the critical point is:
> > > >
> > > > times[cpu] += delta           | if g->polling:
> > > > smp_wmb()                     |   g->polling = polling = 0
> > > > cmpxchg(g->polling, 0, 1)     |   smp_rmb()
> > > >                               |   delta = times[*] (through goto SLOWPATH)
> > > >
> > > > So that hotpath writes to times[] then g->polling and slowpath reads
> > > > g->polling then times[]. cmpxchg() implies a full barrier, so we can
> > > > drop smp_wmb(). Something like this:
> > > >
> > > > times[cpu] += delta           | if g->polling:
> > > > cmpxchg(g->polling, 0, 1)     |   g->polling = polling = 0
> > > >                               |   smp_rmb()
> > > >                               |   delta = times[*] (through goto SLOWPATH)
> > > >
> > > > Would that address your concern about ordering?
> > >
> > > cmpxchg() implies smp_mb() before and after, so the smp_wmb() on the
> > > left column is superfluous.
> > 
> > Should I keep it in the comments to make it obvious and add a note
> > about implicit barriers being the reason we don't call smp_mb() in the
> > code explicitly?
> 
> I'd keep 'em out if they aren't actually in the code. But I'd switch
> 
> 	delta = times[*]
> 
> in this comment to to
> 
> 	get_recent_times() // implies smp_mb()

Actually, I might have been mistaken about this. The seqcount locking
does an smp_rmb() and an smp_wmb(), and that orders reads and writes
respectively, but doesn't necessarily order reads against writes.

So I think we need an explicit smp_mb() after all.