Re: [RFC PATCH 5/5] futex, doc: add a document on how to use the spinning futexes

Waiman Long
2014-07-22T03:19:10Z

On 07/21/2014 11:45 AM, Randy Dunlap wrote:
> On 07/21/2014 08:24 AM, Waiman Long wrote:
>> This patch adds a new document file on how to use the spinning futexes.
>>
>> Signed-off-by: Waiman Long<Waiman.Long@hp.com>
>> ---
>> Documentation/spinning-futex.txt | 109 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>> 1 files changed, 109 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
>> create mode 100644 Documentation/spinning-futex.txt
>>
>> diff --git a/Documentation/spinning-futex.txt b/Documentation/spinning-futex.txt
>> new file mode 100644
>> index 0000000..e3cb5a2
>> --- /dev/null
>> +++ b/Documentation/spinning-futex.txt
>> @@ -0,0 +1,109 @@
>> +Started by: Waiman Long<waiman.long@hp.com>
>> +
>> +Spinning Futex
>> +--------------
>> +
>> +There are two main problems for a wait-wake futex (FUTEX_WAIT and
>> +FUTEX_WAKE) when used for creating user-space lock primitives:
>> +
>> + 1) With a wait-wake futex, tasks waiting for a lock are put to sleep
>> + in the futex queue to be woken up by the lock owner when it is done
>> + with the lock. Waking up a sleeping task, however, introduces some
>> + additional latency which can be large especially if the critical
>> + section protected by the lock is relatively short. This may cause
>> + a performance bottleneck on large systems with many CPUs running
>> + applications that need a lot of inter-thread synchronization.
>> +
>> + 2) The performance of the wait-wake futex is currently
>> + spinlock-constrained. When many threads are contending for a
>> + futex in a large system with many CPUs, it is not unusual to have
>> + spinlock contention accounting for more than 90% of the total
>> + CPU cycles consumed at various points in time.
>> +
>> +Spinning futex is a solution to both the wakeup latency and spinlock
>> +contention problems by optimistically spinning on a locked futex
>> +when the lock owner is running within the kernel until the lock is
>> +free. This is the same optimistic spinning mechanism used by the kernel
>> +mutex and rw semaphore implementations to improve performance. The
>> +optimistic spinning was done without taking any lock.
> is done
>
>> +
>> +Implementation
>> +--------------
>> +
>> +Like the PI and robust futexes, a lock acquirer has to atomically
>> +put its thread ID (TID) into the lower 30 bits of the 32-bit futex
>> +which should has an original value of 0. If it succeeds, it will be
> have
>
>> +the owner of the futex. Otherwise, it has to call into the kernel
>> +using the new FUTEX_SPIN_LOCK futex(2) syscall.
>> +
>> +The kernel will use the setting of the most significant bit
>> +(FUTEX_WAITERS) in the futex value to indicate one or more waiters
>> +are sleeping and need to be woken up later on.
>> +
>> +When it is time to unlock, the lock owner has to atomically clear
>> +the TID portion of the futex value. If the FUTEX_WAITERS bit is set,
>> +it has to issue a FUTEX_SPIN_UNLOCK futex system call to wake up the
>> +sleeping task.
>> +
>> +A return value of 1 from the FUTEX_SPIN_UNLOCK futex(2) syscall
>> +indicates a task has been woken up. The syscall returns 0 if no
>> +sleeping task is found or spinners are present to take the lock.
>> +
>> +The error number returned by a FUTEX_SPIN_UNLOCK call on an empty
>> +futex can be used to decide if the spinning futex functionality is
>> +implemented in the kernel. If it is present, the returned error number
>> +should be ESRCH. Otherwise it will be ENOSYS.
>> +
>> +Currently, only the first and the second arguments (the futex address
>> +and the opcode) of the futex(2) syscall is used. All the other
> are used.
>
>> +arguments must be set to 0 or NULL to avoid forward compatibility
>> +problem.
>> +
>> +The spinning futex requires the kernel to have support for the cmpxchg
>> +functionality. For architectures that don't support cmpxchg, spinning
>> +futex will not be supported as well.
>> +
>> +Usage Scenario
>> +--------------
>> +
>> +A spinning futex can be used as an exclusive lock to guard a critical
>> +section which are unlikely to go to sleep in the kernel. The spinners
> is
>
>> +in a spinning futex, however, will fall back to sleep in a wait queue
>> +if the lock owner isn't running. Therefore, it can also be used when
>> +the critical section is long and prone to sleeping. However, it may
>> +not have the performance benefit when compared with a wait-wake futex
>> +in this case.
>> +
>> +Sample Code
>> +-----------
>> +
>> +The following are sample code to implement a simple lock and unlock
> is
>
>> +function.
>> +
>> +__thread int tid; /* Thread ID */
>> +
>> +void mutex_lock(int *faddr)
>> +{
>> + if (cmpxchg(faddr, 0, tid) == 0)
>> + return;
>> + for (;;)
>> + if (futex(faddr, FUTEX_SPIN_LOCK, ...) == 0)
>> + break;
>> +}
>> +
>> +void mutex_unlock(int *faddr)
>> +{
>> + int old, fval;
>> +
>> + if ((fval = cmpxchg(faddr, tid, 0)) == tid)
>> + return;
>> + /* Clear only the TID portion of the futex */
>> + for (;;) {
>> + old = fval;
>> + fval = cmpxchg(faddr, old, old& ~FUTEX_TID_MASK);
>> + if (fval == old)
>> + break;
>> + }
>> + if (fval& FUTEX_WAITERS)
>> + futex(faddr, FUTEX_SPIN_UNLOCK, ...);
>> +}
>>
>

Thank for the grammar corrections. Will apply those to the documents.

-Longman