Re: Internal vs. external barriers (was: Re: Interesting LKMM litmus test)

Andrea Parri
2023-01-04T15:42:49Z

On Tue, Jan 03, 2023 at 01:56:08PM -0500, Alan Stern wrote:
> [Added LKML to the CC: list so there will be a permanent record of this
> part of the discussion, and changed the Subject: to something more
> descriptive of the topic at hand.]
>
> On Tue, Jan 03, 2023 at 04:57:56PM +0000, Jonas Oberhauser wrote:
> > Happy new year everyone!
> >
> > I'd like to circle back to the brief discussion we had about ppo \subseteq po.
> >
> > Here's some context:
> >
> > > > > > the preserved program order not always being a
> > > > > > program order, lack of
> > > >
> > > > > Where does the LKMM allow a ppo relation not to be in program order?
> > > >
> > > > When one thread releases a lock and another one takes the lock, you
> > > > can get an mb relation between the two threads
> > > >
> > > > https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/tools/memory-model/linux
> > > > -kernel.cat#L40
> > > >
> > > > this then turns into a ppo edge.
> >
> > > Ah. I suppose we should have been a little more careful about internal vs. external full barriers. RCU barriers are also external, but the model didn't try to include them in the definition of mb; we should have done the same with unlock-lock.
> >
> > To be more explicit, in the current LKMM, mb includes some cases of po;[UL];co;[LKW];po which also relates events between threads, and this trickles up to the ppo:
> >
> > let mb = ([M] ; fencerel(Mb) ; [M]) |
> > ([M] ; fencerel(Before-atomic) ; [RMW] ; po? ; [M]) |
> > ([M] ; po? ; [RMW] ; fencerel(After-atomic) ; [M]) |
> > ([M] ; po? ; [LKW] ; fencerel(After-spinlock) ; [M]) |
> > ([M] ; po ; [UL] ; (co | po) ; [LKW] ;
> > fencerel(After-unlock-lock) ; [M])
> > let gp = po ; [Sync-rcu | Sync-srcu] ; po?
> > let strong-fence = mb | gp
> > ...
> > let ppo = to-r | to-w | (... | strong-fence | ...) | (po-unlock-lock-po & int) // expanded for readability
> >
> > Because of this, not every preserved program order edge is actually a program order edge that is being preserved.
>
> Indeed, one can argue that neither the fence nor the (po-unlock-lock-po
> & int) sub-relations should be included in ppo, since they don't reflect
> dataflow constraints. They could instead be added separately to the
> definition of hb, which is the only place that uses ppo.
>
> > My suggestion for a fix would be to move this part out of mb and strong-fence, and instead introduce a new relation strong-sync that covers synchronization also between threads.
> >
> > let mb = ([M] ; fencerel(Mb) ; [M]) |
> > ([M] ; fencerel(Before-atomic) ; [RMW] ; po? ; [M]) |
> > ([M] ; po? ; [RMW] ; fencerel(After-atomic) ; [M]) |
> > ([M] ; po? ; [LKW] ; fencerel(After-spinlock) ; [M]) |
> > - ([M] ; po ; [UL] ; (co | po) ; [LKW] ;
> > - fencerel(After-unlock-lock) ; [M])
> > let gp = po ; [Sync-rcu | Sync-srcu] ; po?
> > let strong-fence = mb | gp
> > + let strong-sync = strong-fence | ([M] ; po ; [UL] ; (co | po) ; [LKW] ;
> > + fencerel(After-unlock-lock) ; [M])
> > ...
> > let ppo = to-r | to-w | (... | strong-fence | ...) | (po-unlock-lock-po & int)
> >
> > and then use strong-sync instead of strong-fence everywhere else, e.g.
> > - let pb = prop ; strong-fence ; hb* ; [Marked]
> > + let pb = prop ; strong-sync ; hb* ; [Marked]
> > and similarly where strong-fence is being redefined and used in various later lines.
> > (In general I would prefer renaming also other *-fence relations into *-sync when they include edges between threads).
> >
> >
> > Note that no ordering is changed by this move.
> > Firstly, the case [M];po;[UL];po;[LKW]; fencerel(After-unlock-lock) ; [M] which is also eliminated from mb by this change is still present in ppo through the definition ppo = ... | (po-unlock-lock-po & int).
> > Secondly, for the ordering of [M];po;[UL];co;[LKW]; fencerel(After-unlock-lock) ; [M] we can focus on the case [M];po;[UL];coe;[LKW]; fencerel(After-unlock-lock) ; [M] because the other case (coi) is covered by the previous case.
> > Ordering imposed by this case is also not lost, since every [M];po;[UL];coe;[LKW]; fencerel(After-unlock-lock) ; [M] edge also imposes a
> > [M];po;[UL];rfe;[LKR]; fencerel(After-unlock-lock) ; [M]
> > edge which is a po-rel ; [Marked] ; rfe ; [Marked] ; acq-po edge and hence hb;hb;hb.
> > Thirdly, no new ordering is imposed by this change since every place we now order by strong-sync was previously ordered by the old strong-fence which is identical to the new strong-sync, and in all other places we changed we just (potentially) removed ordering.
> >
> > The definition of strong-sync could also be slightly simplified to
> > let strong-sync = strong-fence | ([M]; po-unlock-lock-po ; [After-unlock-lock] ; po ; [M])
> > which is kind of pretty because the after-unlock-lock is now after po-unlock-lock-po.
> >
> > What do you think?
>
> That all sounds good to me. However, I wonder if it might be better to
> use "strong-order" (and similar) for the new relation name instead of
> "strong-sync". The idea being that fences are about ordering, not (or
> not directly) about synchronization.

Sounds good to me too. I'm trying to remember why we went for the LKW
event to model smp_mb__after_unlock_lock() (as opposed to the LKR event,
as suggested above/in po-unlock-lock-po). Anyway, I currently see no
issue with the above (we know that LKW and LKR come paired), and I think
it's good to merge the two notions of "unlock-lock pair" if possible.

Andrea