linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 00/20] x86: ticket lock rewrite and paravirtualization

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Date:	Mon, 15 Nov 2010 21:14:48 +0100
From:	Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>
To:	"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>
Cc:	Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy@...p.org>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Jan Beulich <JBeulich@...ell.com>, Avi Kivity <avi@...hat.com>,
	Xen-devel <xen-devel@...ts.xensource.com>,
	Linux Virtualization <virtualization@...ts.linux-foundation.org>,
	Srivatsa Vaddagiri <vatsa@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>,
	Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@...ymtl.ca>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 00/20] x86: ticket lock rewrite and paravirtualization

On Mon, 2010-11-15 at 12:03 -0800, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> On 11/15/2010 12:00 PM, Jeremy Fitzhardinge wrote:
> > 
> > Another approach I discussed with PeterZ and Mathieu is to steal the LSB
> > of the ticket counters (halving the max CPU count) to use as a "there is
> > someone in slowpath waiting on this lock".  But I haven't spent the time
> > to work out an algorithm to maintain that flag (or flags, since there
> > are bits available) in a correct and efficient way.
> > 
> 
> Definitely worth pondering.

Right, so the idea was to make the ticket increment 2, which would leave
the LSB of both the head and tail available. I think that if one were to
set both (using a cmpxchg), the ticket fast-path wouldn't need any
changes since head==tail is still the correct condition for acquisition.

Then the unlock needs an added conditional:
  if (tail & 1) 
	unlock_slowpath()

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