linux-kernel - Re: [BUG] "sched: Remove rq->lock from the first half of ttwu()" locks up on ARM

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Date:	Fri, 27 May 2011 14:06:29 +0200
From:	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>
To:	Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@....com>
Cc:	Russell King - ARM Linux <linux@....linux.org.uk>,
	Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>,
	Marc Zyngier <Marc.Zyngier@....com>,
	Frank Rowand <frank.rowand@...sony.com>,
	Oleg Nesterov <oleg@...hat.com>, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	Yong Zhang <yong.zhang0@...il.com>,
	linux-arm-kernel@...ts.infradead.org
Subject: Re: [BUG] "sched: Remove rq->lock from the first half of ttwu()"
 locks up on ARM

* Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@....com> wrote:

> > How much time does that take on contemporary ARM hardware, 
> > typically (and worst-case)?
> 
> On newer ARMv6 and ARMv7 hardware, we no longer flush the caches at 
> context switch as we got VIPT (or PIPT-like) caches.
> 
> But modern ARM processors use something called ASID to tag the TLB 
> entries and we are limited to 256. The switch_mm() code checks for 
> whether we ran out of them to restart the counting. This ASID 
> roll-over event needs to be broadcast to the other CPUs and issuing 
> IPIs with the IRQs disabled isn't always safe. Of course, we could 
> briefly re-enable them at the ASID roll-over time but I'm not sure 
> what the expectations of the code calling switch_mm() are.

The expectations are to have irqs off (we are holding the runqueue 
lock if !__ARCH_WANT_INTERRUPTS_ON_CTXSW), so that's not workable i 
suspect.

But in theory we could drop the rq lock and restart the scheduler 
task-pick and balancing sequence when the ARM TLB tag rolls over. So 
instead of this fragile and assymetric method we'd have a 
straightforward retry-in-rare-cases method.

That means some modifications to switch_mm() but should be solvable.

That would make ARM special only in so far that it's one of the few 
architectures that signal 'retry task pickup' via switch_mm() - it 
would use the stock scheduler otherwise and we could remove 
__ARCH_WANT_INTERRUPTS_ON_CTXSW and perhaps even 
__ARCH_WANT_UNLOCKED_CTXSW altogether.

I'd suggest doing this once modern ARM chips get so widespread that 
you can realistically induce a ~700 usecs irqs-off delays on old, 
virtual-cache ARM chips. Old chips would likely use old kernels 
anyway, right?

Thanks,

	Ingo
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