Re: [PATCH 4/4] locking: Introduce smp_cond_acquire()

Will Deacon
2015-11-16T16:24:59Z

On Mon, Nov 16, 2015 at 05:04:45PM +0100, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 16, 2015 at 04:56:58PM +0100, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> > On Thu, Nov 12, 2015 at 10:21:39AM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > > Now, the point of spin_unlock_wait() (and "spin_is_locked()") should
> > > generally be that you have some external ordering guarantee that
> > > guarantees that the lock has been taken. For example, for the IPC
> > > semaphores, we do either one of:
> > >
> > > (a) get large lock, then - once you hold that lock - wait for each small lock
> > >
> > > or
> > >
> > > (b) get small lock, then - once you hold that lock - check that the
> > > largo lock is unlocked
> > >
> > > and that's the case we should really worry about. The other uses of
> > > spin_unlock_wait() should have similar "I have other reasons to know
> > > I've seen that the lock was taken, or will never be taken after this
> > > because XYZ".
> >
> > I don't think this is true for the usage in do_exit(), we have no
> > knowledge on if pi_lock is taken or not. We just want to make sure that
> > _if_ it were taken, we wait until it is released.
>
> And unless PPC would move to using RCsc locks with a SYNC in
> spin_lock(), I don't think it makes sense to add
> smp_mb__after_unlock_lock() to all tsk->pi_lock instances to fix this.
> As that is far more expensive than flipping the exit path to do
> spin_lock()+spin_unlock().

... or we upgrade spin_unlock_wait to a LOCK operation, which might be
slightly cheaper than spin_lock()+spin_unlock().

Will