Re: [PATCH RFC tip/core/rcu 1/2] srcu: Allow use of Tiny/Tree SRCU from both process and interrupt context

Peter Zijlstra
2017-06-06T16:02:40Z

On Tue, Jun 06, 2017 at 03:08:50PM +0200, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
>
>
> On 06/06/2017 12:53, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> > On Mon, Jun 05, 2017 at 03:09:50PM -0700, Paul E. McKenney wrote:
> >> There would be a slowdown if 1) fast this_cpu_inc is not available and
> >> cannot be implemented (this usually means that atomic_inc has implicit
> >> memory barriers),
> >
> > I don't get this.
> >
> > How is per-cpu crud related to being strongly ordered?
> >
> > this_cpu_ has 3 forms:
> >
> > x86: single instruction
> > arm64,s390: preempt_disable()+atomic_op
> > generic: local_irq_save()+normal_op
> >
> > Only s390 is TSO, arm64 is very much a weak arch.
>
> Right, and thus arm64 can implement a fast this_cpu_inc using LL/SC.
> s390 cannot because its atomic_inc has implicit memory barriers.

I'm not sure the ordering makes a useful differentiator between a fast
and non-fast this_cpu implementation.

For TSO archs making their atomic primitives fully ordered isn't _that_
much of a burden over their normal ordering requirements. And LL/SC
archs can have very slow (weak) atomics (PPC for example).

(Now theoretically a TSO arch could have weak(er) atomics, but I'm not
aware of any that do this).

I realize we're splitting hairs and slightly off topic :-)