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From: Stephen Hemminger <stephen@networkplumber.org>
To: dev@dpdk.org
Cc: Stephen Hemminger <stephen@networkplumber.org>
Subject: [RFC 0/3] Add pause to empty spinloops
Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2026 10:05:41 -0800	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20260121180845.889190-1-stephen@networkplumber.org> (raw)

On SMT systems, empty spinloops can cause excessive latency due to
the spinning core consuming resources that could be used by other
hardware threads. This series addresses this by adding rte_pause()
calls to busy-wait loops in the cnxk drivers.

The first two patches fix existing empty spinloops in the net/cnxk
and event/cnxk drivers. These were identified using a new coccinelle
script that finds variations of the pattern:

    while (!atomic(&flag));

This is compile tested only! I don't have that hardware.

The third patch adds this coccinelle script to devtools/ so that
similar issues can be detected and fixed automatically across the
codebase.

The script handles multiple atomic API variants:
- Legacy rte_atomic*_read() functions
- C11 atomics via rte_atomic_load_explicit()
- GCC builtins via __atomic_load_n()
- Simple volatile variable checks

Stephen Hemminger (3):
  net/cnxk: add pause to spinloops
  event/cnxk: add pause to spinloops
  devtools/cocci: add script to find empty spinloops

 devtools/cocci/fix_empty_spinloops.cocci | 165 +++++++++++++++++++++++
 drivers/event/cnxk/cn10k_worker.c        |   2 +-
 drivers/event/cnxk/cn20k_worker.c        |   2 +-
 drivers/event/cnxk/cnxk_tim_worker.h     |   4 +-
 drivers/net/cnxk/cn10k_tx.h              |   4 +-
 drivers/net/cnxk/cn20k_tx.h              |   4 +-
 6 files changed, 173 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 devtools/cocci/fix_empty_spinloops.cocci

-- 
2.51.0


             reply	other threads:[~2026-01-21 18:08 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 5+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2026-01-21 18:05 Stephen Hemminger [this message]
2026-01-21 18:05 ` [RFC 1/3] net/cnxk: add pause to spinloops Stephen Hemminger
2026-01-21 18:05 ` [RFC 2/3] event/cnxk: " Stephen Hemminger
2026-01-21 21:01   ` Stephen Hemminger
2026-01-21 18:05 ` [RFC 3/3] devtools/cocci: add script to find empty spinloops Stephen Hemminger

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