[PATCH v11 06/16] qspinlock: prolong the stay in the pending bit path

Waiman Long
2014-05-30T15:43:52Z

There is a problem in the current pending bit spinning code. When the
lock is free, but the pending bit holder hasn't grabbed the lock &
cleared the pending bit yet, the spinning code will not be run.
As a result, the regular queuing code path might be used most of
the time even when there is only 2 tasks contending for the lock.
Assuming that the pending bit holder is going to get the lock and
clear the pending bit soon, it is actually better to wait than to be
queued up which has a higher overhead.

The following tables show the before-patch execution time (in ms)
of a micro-benchmark where 5M iterations of the lock/unlock cycles
were run on a 10-core Westere-EX x86-64 CPU with 2 different types of
loads - standalone (lock and protected data in different cachelines)
and embedded (lock and protected data in the same cacheline).

[Standalone/Embedded - same node]
# of tasks Ticket lock Queue lock %Change
---------- ----------- ---------- -------
1 135/ 111 135/ 101 0%/ -9%
2 890/ 779 1885/1990 +112%/+156%
3 1932/1859 2333/2341 +21%/ +26%
4 2829/2726 2900/2923 +3%/ +7%
5 3834/3761 3655/3648 -5%/ -3%
6 4963/4976 4336/4326 -13%/ -13%
7 6299/6269 5057/5064 -20%/ -19%
8 7691/7569 5786/5798 -25%/ -23%

Of course, the results will varies depending on what kind of test
machine is used.

With 1 task per NUMA node, the execution times are:

[Standalone - different nodes]
# of nodes Ticket lock Queue lock %Change
---------- ----------- ---------- -------
1 135 135 0%
2 4604 5087 +10%
3 10940 12224 +12%
4 21555 10555 -51%

It can be seen that the queue spinlock is slower than the ticket
spinlock when there are 2 or 3 contending tasks. In all the other case,
the queue spinlock is either equal or faster than the ticket spinlock.

With this patch, the performance data for 2 contending tasks are:

[Standalone/Embedded]
# of tasks Ticket lock Queue lock %Change
---------- ----------- ---------- -------
2 890/779 984/871 +11%/+12%

[Standalone - different nodes]
# of nodes Ticket lock Queue lock %Change
---------- ----------- ---------- -------
2 4604 1364 -70%

It can be seen that the queue spinlock performance for 2 contending
tasks is now comparable to ticket spinlock on the same node, but much
faster when in different nodes. With 3 contending tasks, however,
the ticket spinlock is still quite a bit faster.

Signed-off-by: Waiman Long <Waiman.Long@hp.com>
---
kernel/locking/qspinlock.c | 18 ++++++++++++++++--
1 files changed, 16 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/kernel/locking/qspinlock.c b/kernel/locking/qspinlock.c
index fc7fd8c..7f10758 100644
--- a/kernel/locking/qspinlock.c
+++ b/kernel/locking/qspinlock.c
@@ -233,11 +233,25 @@ void queue_spin_lock_slowpath(struct qspinlock *lock, u32 val)
*/
for (;;) {
/*
- * If we observe any contention; queue.
+ * If we observe that the queue is not empty or both
+ * the pending and lock bits are set, queue
*/
- if (val & ~_Q_LOCKED_MASK)
+ if ((val & _Q_TAIL_MASK) ||
+ (val == (_Q_LOCKED_VAL|_Q_PENDING_VAL)))
goto queue;

+ if (val == _Q_PENDING_VAL) {
+ /*
+ * Pending bit is set, but not the lock bit.
+ * Assuming that the pending bit holder is going to
+ * set the lock bit and clear the pending bit soon,
+ * it is better to wait than to exit at this point.
+ */
+ cpu_relax();
+ val = atomic_read(&lock->val);
+ continue;
+ }
+
new = _Q_LOCKED_VAL;
if (val == new)
new |= _Q_PENDING_VAL;
--
1.7.1