Re: [PATCH] NMI request/release

[Dipankar Sarma <dipankar@gamebox.net>]

On Tue, Oct 22, 2002 at 01:05:57PM -0500, Corey Minyard wrote:
> >You need to walk the list in call_nmi_handlers from nmi interrupt handler where
> >preemption is not an issue anyway. Using RCU you can possibly do a safe
> >walking of the nmi handlers. To do this, your update side code
> >(request/release nmi) will still have to be serialized (spinlock), but
> >you should not need to wait for completion of any other CPU executing
> >the nmi handler, instead provide wrappers for nmi_handler
> >allocation/free and there free the nmi_handler using an RCU callback
> >(call_rcu()). The nmi_handler will not be freed until all the CPUs
> >have done a contex switch or executed user-level or been idle.
> >This will gurantee that *this* nmi_handler is not in execution
> >and can safely be freed.
> >
> >This of course is a very simplistic view of the things, there could
> >be complications that I may have overlooked. But I would be happy
> >to help out on this if you want.
> >
> This doesn't sound any simpler than what I am doing right now.  In fact, 
> it sounds more complex.  Am I correct?  What I am doing is pretty simple 
> and correct.  Maybe more complexity would be required if you couldn't 
> atomically update a pointer, but I think simplicity should win here.

I would vote for simplicity and would normally agree with you here. But
it seems to me that using RCU, you can avoid atmic operations
and cache line bouncing of calling_nmi_handlers in the fast path
(nmi interrupt handler). One could argue whether it is really
a fast path or not, but if you are using it for profiling, I would
say it is. No ?

Thanks
Dipankar