linux-kernel - Re: [RFC PATCH] introduce sys_membarrier(): process-wide memory barrier (v5)

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Date:	Wed, 13 Jan 2010 13:24:42 -0500
From:	Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@...ymtl.ca>
To:	Nicholas Miell <nmiell@...cast.net>
Cc:	paulmck@...ux.vnet.ibm.com, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	Steven Rostedt <rostedt@...dmis.org>,
	Oleg Nesterov <oleg@...hat.com>,
	Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>,
	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>, akpm@...ux-foundation.org,
	josh@...htriplett.org, tglx@...utronix.de, Valdis.Kletnieks@...edu,
	dhowells@...hat.com, laijs@...fujitsu.com, dipankar@...ibm.com
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH] introduce sys_membarrier(): process-wide memory
	barrier (v5)

* Nicholas Miell (nmiell@...cast.net) wrote:
> On Wed, 2010-01-13 at 09:38 -0500, Mathieu Desnoyers wrote:
> > * Nicholas Miell (nmiell@...cast.net) wrote:
> > > On Tue, 2010-01-12 at 21:31 -0800, Paul E. McKenney wrote:
> > > > Why is it OK to ignore the developer's request for an expedited
> > > > membarrer()?  The guy who expected the syscall to complete in a few
> > > > microseconds might not be so happy to have it take many milliseconds.
> > > > By the same token, the guy who specified non-expedited so as to minimally
> > > > disturb other threads in the system might not be so happy to see them
> > > > all be IPIed for no good reason.  ;-)
> > > > 
> > > > 							Thanx, Paul
> > > 
> > > Because the behavior is still correct, even if it is slower than you'd
> > > expect. It doesn't really matter where the expedited flag goes, though,
> > > because every future kernel will understand it.
> > 
> > 16ms vs few µs is such a huge performance difference that it's barely
> > adequate to say that the behavior is still correct, but we definitely
> > cannot say it is unchanged. It can really render some applications
> > unusable.
> > 
> > If, for some reason, the expedited version of the system call happens to
> > be unimplemented, we should return -EINVAL, so the application can deal
> > with it in the approproate way (which could be, for instance, to use a
> > fall-back doing memory barriers on the RCU read-side).
> > 
> > But I don't see any reason for not implementing the expedited version
> > properly in the first place.
> > 
> 
> You're focusing on the least important detail of the proposal. It
> doesn't matter whether the expedited flag is compat flag or an incompat
> flag, because every version of kernel that ever has the membarrier
> system call will know what it means, and even if for some reason it
> doesn't implement expedited membarriers, it will still be able to
> recognize the flag and return an error.
> 
> The whole point of compat and incompat flags is that it allows new
> applications to run on old kernels and either work or fail as
> appropriate, depending on whether the new features they're using must be
> implemented or can be silently ignored.

I see. Thanks for the explanation. Then the expedited flag should
clearly be part of the mandatory flags.

Can you point me to other system calls that are doing this ?

Thanks,

Mathieu

> 
> -- 
> Nicholas Miell <nmiell@...cast.net>
> 

-- 
Mathieu Desnoyers
OpenPGP key fingerprint: 8CD5 52C3 8E3C 4140 715F  BA06 3F25 A8FE 3BAE 9A68
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