Re: [PATCH 01/33] drm/i915: Add smp_rmb() to busy ioctl's RCU dance

[Joonas Lahtinen <joonas.lahtinen@linux.intel.com>]

On ti, 2016-08-09 at 08:14 +0100, Chris Wilson wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 09, 2016 at 09:36:48AM +0300, Joonas Lahtinen wrote:
> > 
> > On ma, 2016-08-08 at 10:45 +0100, Chris Wilson wrote:
> > > 
> > > On Mon, Aug 08, 2016 at 10:30:25AM +0100, Chris Wilson wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > On Mon, Aug 08, 2016 at 11:12:59AM +0200, Daniel Vetter wrote:
> > > > > 
> > > > > 
> > > > > On Sun, Aug 07, 2016 at 03:45:09PM +0100, Chris Wilson wrote:
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > In the debate as to whether the second read of active->request is
> > > > > > ordered after the dependent reads of the first read of active->request,
> > > > > > just give in and throw a smp_rmb() in there so that ordering of loads is
> > > > > > assured.
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > v2: Explain the manual smp_rmb()
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > Signed-off-by: Chris Wilson <chris@chris-wilson.co.uk>
> > > > > > Cc: Daniel Vetter <daniel.vetter@ffwll.ch>
> > > > > > Reviewed-by: Daniel Vetter <daniel.vetter@ffwll.ch>
> > > > > r-b confirmed.
> > > > It's still fishy that we are implying an SMP effect where we need to
> > > > mandate the local processor order (that being the order evaluation of
> > > > request = *active; engine = *request; *active). The two *active are
> > > > already ordered across SMP, so we are only concered about this cpu. :|
> > > More second thoughts. rcu_assign_pointer(NULL) is not visible to
> > > rcu_access_pointer on another CPU without the smp_rmb. 
> > Should not a RCU read side lock be involved?
> Yes, we use rcu read lock here. The question here is about visibility of
> the other processor writes vs the local processor order. Before the
> other processor can overwrite the request during reallocation, it will
> have updated the active->request and gone through a wmb. During busy
> ioctl's read of the request, we want to make sure that the values we
> read (request->engine, request->seqno) have not been overwritten as we
> do so - and we do that by serialising the second pointer check with the
> other cpus.

As discussed in IRC, some other mechanism than an improvised spinning
loop + some SMP barriers thrown around would be much preferred.

You suggested a seqlock, and it would likely be ok.

Regards, Joonas

> -Chris
> 
-- 
Joonas Lahtinen
Open Source Technology Center
Intel Corporation
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