[PATCH v11 00/16] qspinlock: a 4-byte queue spinlock with PV support

Waiman Long
2014-05-30T15:43:46Z

v10->v11:
- Use a simple test-and-set unfair lock to simplify the code,
but performance may suffer a bit for large guest with many CPUs.
- Take out Raghavendra KT's test results as the unfair lock changes
may render some of his results invalid.
- Add PV support without increasing the size of the core queue node
structure.
- Other minor changes to address some of the feedback comments.

v9->v10:
- Make some minor changes to qspinlock.c to accommodate review feedback.
- Change author to PeterZ for 2 of the patches.
- Include Raghavendra KT's test results in patch 18.

v8->v9:
- Integrate PeterZ's version of the queue spinlock patch with some
modification:
http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20140310154236.038181843@infradead.org
- Break the more complex patches into smaller ones to ease review effort.
- Fix a racing condition in the PV qspinlock code.

v7->v8:
- Remove one unneeded atomic operation from the slowpath, thus
improving performance.
- Simplify some of the codes and add more comments.
- Test for X86_FEATURE_HYPERVISOR CPU feature bit to enable/disable
unfair lock.
- Reduce unfair lock slowpath lock stealing frequency depending
on its distance from the queue head.
- Add performance data for IvyBridge-EX CPU.

v6->v7:
- Remove an atomic operation from the 2-task contending code
- Shorten the names of some macros
- Make the queue waiter to attempt to steal lock when unfair lock is
enabled.
- Remove lock holder kick from the PV code and fix a race condition
- Run the unfair lock & PV code on overcommitted KVM guests to collect
performance data.

v5->v6:
- Change the optimized 2-task contending code to make it fairer at the
expense of a bit of performance.
- Add a patch to support unfair queue spinlock for Xen.
- Modify the PV qspinlock code to follow what was done in the PV
ticketlock.
- Add performance data for the unfair lock as well as the PV
support code.

v4->v5:
- Move the optimized 2-task contending code to the generic file to
enable more architectures to use it without code duplication.
- Address some of the style-related comments by PeterZ.
- Allow the use of unfair queue spinlock in a real para-virtualized
execution environment.
- Add para-virtualization support to the qspinlock code by ensuring
that the lock holder and queue head stay alive as much as possible.

v3->v4:
- Remove debugging code and fix a configuration error
- Simplify the qspinlock structure and streamline the code to make it
perform a bit better
- Add an x86 version of asm/qspinlock.h for holding x86 specific
optimization.
- Add an optimized x86 code path for 2 contending tasks to improve
low contention performance.

v2->v3:
- Simplify the code by using numerous mode only without an unfair option.
- Use the latest smp_load_acquire()/smp_store_release() barriers.
- Move the queue spinlock code to kernel/locking.
- Make the use of queue spinlock the default for x86-64 without user
configuration.
- Additional performance tuning.

v1->v2:
- Add some more comments to document what the code does.
- Add a numerous CPU mode to support >= 16K CPUs
- Add a configuration option to allow lock stealing which can further
improve performance in many cases.
- Enable wakeup of queue head CPU at unlock time for non-numerous
CPU mode.

This patch set has 3 different sections:
1) Patches 1-7: Introduces a queue-based spinlock implementation that
can replace the default ticket spinlock without increasing the
size of the spinlock data structure. As a result, critical kernel
data structures that embed spinlock won't increase in size and
break data alignments.
2) Patches 8-9: Enables the use of unfair queue spinlock in a
virtual guest. This can resolve some of the locking related
performance issues due to the fact that the next CPU to get the
lock may have been scheduled out for a period of time.
3) Patches 10-16: Enable qspinlock para-virtualization support
by halting the waiting CPUs after spinning for a certain amount of
time. The unlock code will detect the a sleeping waiter and wake it
up. This is essentially the same logic as the PV ticketlock code.

The queue spinlock has slightly better performance than the ticket
spinlock in uncontended case. Its performance can be much better
with moderate to heavy contention. This patch has the potential of
improving the performance of all the workloads that have moderate to
heavy spinlock contention.

The queue spinlock is especially suitable for NUMA machines with at
least 2 sockets, though noticeable performance benefit probably won't
show up in machines with less than 4 sockets.

The purpose of this patch set is not to solve any particular spinlock
contention problems. Those need to be solved by refactoring the code
to make more efficient use of the lock or finer granularity ones. The
main purpose is to make the lock contention problems more tolerable
until someone can spend the time and effort to fix them.

Peter Zijlstra (2):
qspinlock: Add pending bit
qspinlock: Optimize for smaller NR_CPUS

Waiman Long (14):
qspinlock: A simple generic 4-byte queue spinlock
qspinlock, x86: Enable x86-64 to use queue spinlock
qspinlock: Extract out the exchange of tail code word
qspinlock: prolong the stay in the pending bit path
qspinlock: Use a simple write to grab the lock, if applicable
qspinlock: Prepare for unfair lock support
qspinlock, x86: Allow unfair spinlock in a virtual guest
qspinlock: Split the MCS queuing code into a separate slowerpath
pvqspinlock, x86: Rename paravirt_ticketlocks_enabled
pvqspinlock, x86: Add PV data structure & methods
pvqspinlock: Enable coexistence with the unfair lock
pvqspinlock: Add qspinlock para-virtualization support
pvqspinlock, x86: Enable PV qspinlock PV for KVM
pvqspinlock, x86: Enable PV qspinlock for XEN

arch/x86/Kconfig | 12 +
arch/x86/include/asm/paravirt.h | 18 +-
arch/x86/include/asm/paravirt_types.h | 17 +
arch/x86/include/asm/pvqspinlock.h | 359 +++++++++++++++++++++
arch/x86/include/asm/qspinlock.h | 141 +++++++++
arch/x86/include/asm/spinlock.h | 9 +-
arch/x86/include/asm/spinlock_types.h | 4 +
arch/x86/kernel/Makefile | 1 +
arch/x86/kernel/kvm.c | 137 ++++++++-
arch/x86/kernel/paravirt-spinlocks.c | 36 ++-
arch/x86/xen/spinlock.c | 149 +++++++++-
include/asm-generic/qspinlock.h | 118 +++++++
include/asm-generic/qspinlock_types.h | 82 +++++
kernel/Kconfig.locks | 7 +
kernel/locking/Makefile | 1 +
kernel/locking/mcs_spinlock.h | 1 +
kernel/locking/qspinlock.c | 552 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
17 files changed, 1632 insertions(+), 12 deletions(-)
create mode 100644 arch/x86/include/asm/pvqspinlock.h
create mode 100644 arch/x86/include/asm/qspinlock.h
create mode 100644 include/asm-generic/qspinlock.h
create mode 100644 include/asm-generic/qspinlock_types.h
create mode 100644 kernel/locking/qspinlock.c