Re: [PATCH 7/8] membarrier: Remove arm (32) support for SYNC_CORE

[Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@efficios.com>]

On 17-Jun-2021 02:51:33 PM, Mark Rutland wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 17, 2021 at 06:41:41AM -0700, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > On Thu, Jun 17, 2021, at 4:33 AM, Mark Rutland wrote:
> > > On Thu, Jun 17, 2021 at 12:23:05PM +0100, Russell King (Oracle) wrote:
> > > > On Thu, Jun 17, 2021 at 11:40:46AM +0100, Mark Rutland wrote:
> > > > > On Tue, Jun 15, 2021 at 08:21:12PM -0700, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
> > > > > > On arm32, the only way to safely flush icache from usermode is to call
> > > > > > cacheflush(2).  This also handles any required pipeline flushes, so
> > > > > > membarrier's SYNC_CORE feature is useless on arm.  Remove it.
> > > > > 
> > > > > Unfortunately, it's a bit more complicated than that, and these days
> > > > > SYNC_CORE is equally necessary on arm as on arm64. This is something
> > > > > that changed in the architecture over time, but since ARMv7 we generally
> > > > > need both the cache maintenance *and* a context synchronization event
> > > > > (the latter must occur on the CPU which will execute the instructions).
> > > > > 
> > > > > If you look at the latest ARMv7-AR manual (ARM DDI 406C.d), section
> > > > > A3.5.4 "Concurrent modification and execution of instructions" covers
> > > > > this. That manual can be found at:
> > > > > 
> > > > > 	https://developer.arm.com/documentation/ddi0406/latest/
> > > > 
> > > > Looking at that, sys_cacheflush() meets this. The manual details a
> > > > series of cache maintenance calls in "step 1" that the modifying thread
> > > > must issue - this is exactly what sys_cacheflush() does. The same is
> > > > true for ARMv6, except the "ISB" terminology is replaced by a
> > > > "PrefetchFlush" terminology. (I checked DDI0100I).
> > > > 
> > > > "step 2" requires an ISB on the "other CPU" prior to executing that
> > > > code. As I understand it, in ARMv7, userspace can issue an ISB itself.
> > > > 
> > > > For ARMv6K, it doesn't have ISB, but instead has a CP15 instruction
> > > > for this that isn't availble to userspace. This is where we come to
> > > > the situation about ARM 11MPCore, and whether we continue to support
> > > > it or not.
> > > > 
> > > > So, I think we're completely fine with ARMv7 under 32-bit ARM kernels
> > > > as userspace has everything that's required. ARMv6K is a different
> > > > matter as we've already identified for several reasons.
> > > 
> > > Sure, and I agree we should not change cacheflush().
> > > 
> > > The point of membarrier(SYNC_CORE) is that you can move the cost of that
> > > ISB out of the fast-path in the executing thread(s) and into the
> > > slow-path on the thread which generated the code.
> > > 
> > > So e.g. rather than an executing thread always having to do:
> > > 
> > > 	LDR	<reg>, [<funcptr>]
> > > 	ISB	// in case funcptr was just updated
> > > 	BLR	<reg>
> > > 
> > > ... you have the thread generating the code use membarrier(SYNC_CORE)
> > > prior to plublishing the funcptr, and the fast-path on all the executing
> > > threads can be:
> > > 
> > > 	LDR	<reg> [<funcptr>]
> > > 	BLR	<reg>
> > > 
> > > ... and thus I think we still want membarrier(SYNC_CORE) so that people
> > > can do this, even if there are other means to achieve the same
> > > functionality.
> > 
> > I had the impression that sys_cacheflush() did that.  Am I wrong?
> 
> Currently sys_cacheflush() doesn't do this, and IIUC it has never done
> remote context synchronization even for architectures that need that
> (e.g. x86 requiring a serializing instruction).
> 
> > In any event, I’m even more convinced that no new SYNC_CORE arches
> > should be added. We need a new API that just does the right thing. 
> 
> My intuition is the other way around, and that this is a gnereally
> useful thing for architectures that require context synchronization.
> 
> It's not clear to me what "the right thing" would mean specifically, and
> on architectures with userspace cache maintenance JITs can usually do
> the most optimal maintenance, and only need help for the context
> synchronization.

If I can attempt to summarize the current situation for ARMv7:

- In addition to the cache flushing on the core doing the code update,
  the architecture requires every core to perform a context synchronizing
  instruction before executing the updated code.

- sys_cacheflush() don't do this core sync on every core. It also takes a
  single address range as parameter.

- ARM, ARM64, powerpc, powerpc64, x86, x86-64 all currently handle the
  context synchronization requirement for updating user-space code on
  SMP with sys_membarrier SYNC_CORE. It's not, however, meant to replace
  explicit cache flushing operations if those are needed.

So removing membarrier SYNC_CORE from ARM would be a step backward here.
On ARMv7, the SYNC_CORE is needed _in addition_ to sys_cacheflush.

Adding a sync-core operation at the end of sys_cacheflush would be
inefficient for common GC use-cases where a rather large set of address
ranges are invalidated in one go: for this, we either want the GC to:

- Invoke sys_cacheflush for each targeted range, and then issue a single
  sys_membarrier SYNC_CORE, or

- Implement a new "sys_cacheflush_iov" which takes an iovec input. There
  I see that it could indeed invalidate all relevant cache lines *and*
  issue the SYNC_CORE at the end.

But shoehorning the SYNC_CORE in the pre-existing sys_cacheflush after
the fact seems like a bad idea.

Thanks,

Mathieu

-- 
Mathieu Desnoyers
EfficiOS Inc.
http://www.efficios.com

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