On Wed, Jul 02, 2014 at 09:59:16AM -0700, Jason Low wrote: > On Wed, 2014-07-02 at 18:27 +0200, Peter Zijlstra wrote: > > On Wed, Jul 02, 2014 at 09:21:10AM -0700, Jason Low wrote: > > > The cancellable MCS spinlock is currently used to queue threads that are > > > doing optimistic spinning. It uses per-cpu nodes, where a thread obtaining > > > the lock would access and queue the local node corresponding to the CPU > > > that > > > it's running on. Currently, the cancellable MCS lock is implemented by > > > using > > > pointers to these nodes. > > > > > > In this RFC patch, instead of operating on pointers to the per-cpu nodes, > > > we > > > store the CPU numbers in which the per-cpu nodes correspond to in > > > atomic_t. > > > A similar concept is used with the qspinlock. > > > > > > We add 1 to the CPU number to retrive an "encoded value" representing the > > > node > > > of that CPU. By doing this, 0 can represent "no CPU", which allows us to > > > keep the simple "if (CPU)" and "if (!CPU)" checks. In this patch, the > > > next and > > > prev pointers in each node were also modified to store encoded CPU values. > > > > > > By operating on the CPU # of the nodes using atomic_t instead of pointers > > > to those nodes, this can reduce the overhead of the cancellable MCS > > > spinlock > > > by 32 bits (on 64 bit systems). > > > > Still struggling to figure out why you did this. > > Why I converted pointers to atomic_t? > > This would avoid the potentially racy ACCESS_ONCE stores + cmpxchg while > also using less overhead, since atomic_t is often only 32 bits while > pointers could be 64 bits.
So no real good reason.. The ACCESS_ONCE stores + cmpxchg stuff is likely broken all over the place, and 'fixing' this one place doesn't cure the problem.
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