Re: [Qemu-devel] Using aio_poll for timer carrier threads

[Jan Kiszka <jan.kiszka@siemens.com>]

On 2013-08-13 15:45, Stefan Hajnoczi wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 13, 2013 at 09:56:17AM +0200, Jan Kiszka wrote:
>> in the attempt to use Alex' ppoll-based timer rework for decoupled,
>> real-time capable timer device models I'm now scratching my head over
>> the aio_poll interface. I'm looking at dataplane/virtio-blk.c, just finding
>>
>> static void *data_plane_thread(void *opaque)
>> {
>>     VirtIOBlockDataPlane *s = opaque;
>>
>>     do {
>>         aio_poll(s->ctx, true);
>>     } while (!s->stopping || s->num_reqs > 0);
>>     return NULL;
>> }
>>
>> wondering where the locking is. Or doesn't this use need any at all? Are
>> all data structures that this thread accesses exclusively used by it, or
>> are they all accessed in a lock-less way?
> 
> Most of the data structures in dataplane upstream are not shared.
> Virtio, virtio-blk, and Linux AIO raw file I/O are duplicated for
> dataplane and do not rely on QEMU infrastructure.
> 
> I've been working on undoing this duplication over the past months but
> upstream QEMU still mostly does not share data structures and therefore
> does not need much synchronization.  For the crude synchronization that
> we do need we simply start/stop the dataplane thread.
> 
>> Our iothread mainloop more or less open-codes aio_poll and is, thus,
>> able to drop its lock before falling asleep while still holding it
>> during event dispatching. Obviously, I need the same when processing
>> timer lists of an AioContext, protecting them against concurrent
>> modifications over VCPUs or other threads. So I'm thinking of adding a
>> block notification callback to aio_poll, to be called before/after
>> qemu_poll_ns so that any locks can be dropped / reacquired as needed. Or
>> am I missing some magic interface / pattern?
> 
> Upstream dataplane does not use timers, so the code there cannot serve
> as an example.
> 
> If you combine Alex Bligh, Ping Fan, and my latest timer series, you get
> support for QEMUTimer in AioContexts where qemu_timer_mod_ns() and
> qemu_timer_del() are thread-safe.  vm_clock (without icount) and
> rt_clock are thread-safe clock sources.

To which series of yours and Ping Fan are you referring? [1] and [2]?

> 
> This should make timers usable in another thread for clock device
> emulation if only your iothread uses the AioContext and its timers
> (besides the thread-safe mod/del interfaces).

As argued in the other thread, I don't think we need (and want) locking
in the timer subsystem, rather push this to its users. But I'll look
again at your patches, if they are also usable.

> 
> The details depend on your device, do you have a git repo I can look at
> to understand your device model?

Pushed my hacks here:

git://git.kiszka.org/qemu.git queues/rt.new3

Jan

[1] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.emulators.qemu/227590
[2] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.emulators.qemu/226369

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