[PATCH -tip 0/3] expedited "big hammer" RCU grace periods

Paul E. McKenney
2009-06-24T16:45:49Z

This patch set implements the "big hammer" expedited RCU grace periods.
This leverages the existing per-CPU migration kthreads, as suggested
by Ingo. These are awakened in a loop, and waited for in a second loop.
Not fully scalable, but removing the extra hop through smp_call_function
reduces latency on systems with moderate numbers of CPUs. The
synchronize_rcu_expedited() and synchronize_bh_expedited() primitives
invoke synchronize_sched_expedited(), except for CONFIG_PREEMPT_RCU,
where they instead invoke synchronize_rcu() and synchronize_rcu_bh(),
respectively. This will be fixed in the future, after preemptable RCU
is folded into the rcutree implementation.

As before, this does nothing to expedite callbacks already registered
with call_rcu() or call_rcu_bh(), but there is no need to.

Passes many hours of rcutorture testing in parallel with a script
that randomly offlines and onlines CPUs in a number of configurations.
Grace periods take about 40 microseconds on an 8-CPU Power machine, which
I believe is good enough from a performance viewpoint for the near future.
This represents some slowdown from v7, which was unfortunately necessary
to fix some bugs.

This is finally ready for inclusion. ;-)

Shortcomings:

o Does not address preemptable RCU (though synchronize_sched_expedited()
is in fact expedited in this configuration).

o Probably not helpful on systems with thousands of CPUs, but likely
quite helpful even on systems with a few hundred CPUs.

Changes since v7:

o Fixed several embarrassing bugs turned up by tests on multiple
configurations.

Changes since v6:

o Moved to using the migration threads, as suggested by Ingo.

Changes since v5:

o Fixed several embarrassing locking bugs, including those
noted by Ingo and Lai.

o Added a missing set of braces.

o Cut out the extra kthread, so that synchronize_sched_expedited()
directly calls smp_call_function() and waits for the quiescent
states.

o Removed some debug code, but promoted one to production.

o Fix a compiler warning.

Changes since v4:

o Use per-CPU kthreads to force the quiescent states in parallel.

Changes since v3:

o Use a kthread that schedules itself on each CPU in turn to
force a grace period. The synchronize_rcu() primitive
wakes up the kthread in order to avoid messing with affinity
masks on user tasks.

o Tried a number of additional variations on the v3 approach, none
of which helped much.

Changes since v2:

o Use reschedule IPIs rather than a softirq.

Changes since v1:

o Added rcutorture support, and added exports required by
rcutorture.

o Added comment stating that smp_call_function() implies a
memory barrier, suggested by Mathieu.

o Added #include for delay.h.

Documentation/RCU/torture.txt | 17 +++
include/linux/rcuclassic.h | 15 ++-
include/linux/rcupdate.h | 25 ++---
include/linux/rcupreempt.h | 10 ++
include/linux/rcutree.h | 12 ++
kernel/rcupdate.c | 25 +++++
kernel/rcutorture.c | 202 ++++++++++++++++++++++--------------------
kernel/sched.c | 129 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++
8 files changed, 327 insertions(+), 108 deletions(-)