Re: [RFC PATCH v14] sys_membarrier(): system/process-wide memory barrier (x86)

[josh@joshtriplett.org]

On Wed, Mar 18, 2015 at 04:52:14PM +0000, Mathieu Desnoyers wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> > On Wed, Mar 18, 2015 at 12:23:02PM -0400, Mathieu Desnoyers wrote:
> > > memory barriers in reader:    1701557485 reads, 3129842 writes
> > > signal-based scheme:          9825306874 reads,    5386 writes
> > > sys_membarrier:               7992076602 reads,     220 writes
> > > 
> > > The dynamic sys_membarrier availability check adds some overhead to
> > > the read-side compared to the signal-based scheme, but besides that,
> > > with the expedited scheme, we can see that we are close to the read-side
> > > performance of the signal-based scheme. However, this non-expedited
> > > sys_membarrier implementation has a much slower grace period than signal
> > > and memory barrier schemes.
> > 
> > Doesn't the query flag allow you to find out in advance rather than
> > dynamically within the reader?  What's the reader performance if you
> > hardcode availability of membarrier?
> 
> What I am currently doing is to use sys_membarrier with a query
> flag within a lib constructor, and cache the result in a global
> variable. In the reader, I just test the variable, and thus detect
> whether I can use sys_membarrier, or if I need to fallback to
> barriers on both reader and writer.
> 
> Are you suggesting I try removing the global variable load+test
> from the reader fast path ?

Right.  You said that "The dynamic sys_membarrier availability check
adds some overhead to the read-side compared to the signal-based
scheme"; I wondered how much.

- Josh Triplett