Kris Kennaway wrote:
On Wed, Aug 15, 2007 at 09:09:33PM +0400, Artem Kuchin wrote:
Hi!
When i installed twas driver on 6.2-STABLE it said
[FAST]
i presumed that it measn that twa is giant-lock free.
Now, after installing 7-CURRENT i see
Aug 15 17:00:02 omni3 kernel: 3ware device driver for 9000 series storage
controllers, version: 3.70.03.007
Aug 15 17:00:02 omni3 kernel: twa0: <3ware 9000 series Storage Controller>
port 0x3000-0x30ff mem 0x88000000-0x89ffffff,0x8a200000-0x8a200fff irq 16
at devic
Aug 15 17:00:02 omni3 kernel: twa0: [GIANT-LOCKED]
Aug 15 17:00:02 omni3 kernel: twa0: [ITHREAD]
So, it says GIANT-LOCKED and then ITHREAD.
Apparently, i have no real understaning what those words mean.
COuld anyone explain the meaning of
FAST
ITHREAD
Giant-locked is self explanatory and.. bad.
I think 6.x doesn't display the GIANT-LOCKED messages because users
were freaking out too much after they were added at an earlier point
in 6.x development ("Q: why is this driver suddenly giant locked?" "A:
It's always been giant locked, now this fact is displayed as a note to
developers.").
While it's true that a non-giant locked driver would be better, it's
not as bad as you might think because almost nothing else requires
giant for most workloads thesedays (see
http://wiki.freebsd.org/SMPTODO), so in those workloads performance
will not be worse because of it. If you are really bothered by this
you can enable mutex profiling to check how much of a problem it is
for you.
Just to set the facts straight, the TWA driver has always been covered
by Giant, as I explained in another part of this thread. The indication
was just hidden because it used an INTR_FAST handler.
As for performance, having Giant-free drivers is still highly important.
Not having to compete with the tty subsystem or the USB stack is very
important. My recent change to make ATAPI-CAM Giant-free made CD
burning a lot more pleasant for people.
Scott
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