Re: [PATCH] x86/refcount: Implement fast refcount_t handling

Peter Zijlstra
2017-04-24T08:33:39Z

On Fri, Apr 21, 2017 at 03:09:39PM -0700, Kees Cook wrote:
> This patch ports the x86-specific atomic overflow handling from PaX's
> PAX_REFCOUNT to the upstream refcount_t API. This is an updated version
> from PaX that eliminates the saturation race condition by resetting the
> atomic counter back to the INT_MAX saturation value on both overflow and
> underflow. To win a race, a system would have to have INT_MAX threads
> simultaneously overflow before the saturation handler runs.

And is this impossible? Highly unlikely I'll grant you, but absolutely
impossible?

Also, you forgot nr_cpus in your bound. Afaict the worst case here is
O(nr_tasks + 3*nr_cpus).

Because PaX does it, is not a correctness argument. And this really
wants one.