Re: [RFC PATCH-tip v2 5/6] locking/rwsem: Change RWSEM_WAITING_BIAS for better disambiguation

Peter Zijlstra
2016-06-15T21:57:16Z

On Wed, Jun 15, 2016 at 03:31:51PM -0400, Waiman Long wrote:
> On 06/15/2016 01:43 PM, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> >On Tue, Jun 14, 2016 at 06:48:08PM -0400, Waiman Long wrote:
> >>even the reduced maximum of about 16k (32-bit) or 1G (64-bit) should
> >>be more than enough for the foreseeable future.
> >So what happens if I manage to create 16k+ threads on my 32bit kernel
> >and get them all to do mmap() or so at the same time.
> >
> >That doesn't seem too far fetched.
> >
> >Then again, with double that (the current limit) that doesn't seem
> >impossible either.
>
> To hit the limit, we need to have all the threads calling down_write() at
> exactly the same instance in time which, I think, is pretty hard to do.
> Also, I don't believe you will ever see a 16k-cpu massive SMP system running
> on 32-bit kernel. I can imagine such a system running on 64-bit kernel, but
> certainly not 32-bit.

Ah, so I thought we kept the WRITE_BIAS while blocking, which we don't.

But if they all get preempted before we undo the WRITE_BIAS then 1 CPU
will be able to trigger this. However utterly unlikely.