Re: [PATCH 1/4] nohz: Split extended quiescent state handling from nohz switch

Frederic Weisbecker
2011-09-13T00:06:54Z

On Wed, Sep 07, 2011 at 07:22:33AM -0700, Paul E. McKenney wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 04, 2011 at 04:36:43PM -0700, Paul E. McKenney wrote:
> > On Sat, Aug 20, 2011 at 07:30:49PM +0200, Frederic Weisbecker wrote:
> > > It is assumed that rcu won't be used once we switch to tickless
> > > mode and until we restart the tick. However this is not always
> > > true, as in x86-64 where we dereference the idle notifiers after
> > > the tick is stopped.
> > >
> > > To prepare for fixing this, split the tickless mode switching and
> > > RCU extended quiescent state logics.
> > > Make tick_nohz_stop/restart_sched_tick() RCU agnostic but provide
> > > a new pair of APIs tick_nohz_enter/exit_idle() that keep the
> > > old behaviour by handling both the nohz mode and RCU extended
> > > quiescent states, then convert every archs to use these.
> > >
> > > Archs that want to switch to RCU extended QS to some custom points
> > > can do it later by changing the parameter in tick_nohz_enter,exit_idle()
> > > to false and call rcu_enter,exit() separately.
> >
> > This approach looks quite good to me! A few comments below.
>
> But I get RCU stall warnings when running it on powerpc on top of
> the patch set at:
>
> https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/9/7/64
>
> At first glance, it appears that CPUs are entering dyntick-idle
> mode without RCU being informed. Any thoughts on diagnostics?
>
> Thanx, Paul

I've just tested with your rcu/next branch from github and applied
my patches on top of it but did not experience a stall in x86.

That may be related to powerpc more precisely, or may be any arch
but on some particular condition.