Re: [PATCH v2 10/10] riscv: Add qspinlock support based on Zabha extension

Guo Ren
2024-07-16T01:05:05Z

On Tue, Jul 16, 2024 at 3:30 AM Waiman Long <longman@redhat.com> wrote:
>
> On 7/15/24 03:27, Alexandre Ghiti wrote:
> > Hi Guo,
> >
> > On Sun, Jul 7, 2024 at 4:20 AM Guo Ren <guoren@kernel.org> wrote:
> >> On Wed, Jun 26, 2024 at 9:14 PM Alexandre Ghiti <alexghiti@rivosinc.com> wrote:
> >>> In order to produce a generic kernel, a user can select
> >>> CONFIG_COMBO_SPINLOCKS which will fallback at runtime to the ticket
> >>> spinlock implementation if Zabha is not present.
> >>>
> >>> Note that we can't use alternatives here because the discovery of
> >>> extensions is done too late and we need to start with the qspinlock
> >> That's not true; we treat spinlock as qspinlock at first.
> > That's what I said: we have to use the qspinlock implementation at
> > first *because* we can't discover the extensions soon enough to use
> > the right spinlock implementation before the kernel uses a spinlock.
> > And since the spinlocks are used *before* the discovery of the
> > extensions, we cannot use the current alternative mechanism or we'd
> > need to extend it to add an "initial" value which does not depend on
> > the available extensions.
>
> With qspinlock, the lock remains zero after a lock/unlock sequence. That
> is not the case with ticket lock. Assuming that all the discovery will
> be done before SMP boot, the qspinlock slowpath won't be activated and
> so we don't need the presence of any extension. I believe that is the
> main reason why qspinlock is used as the initial default and not ticket
> lock.
Thx Waiman,
Yes, qspinlock is a clean guy, but ticket lock is a dirty one.

Hi Alexandre,
Therefore, the switch point(before reset_init()) is late enough to
change the lock mechanism, and this satisfies the requirements of
apply_boot_alternatives(), apply_early_boot_alternatives(), and
apply_module_alternatives().

>
> Cheers,
> Longman
>

--
Best Regards
Guo Ren