linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 02/20] mm: Add optional TLB flush to generic RCU page-table freeing

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Date:	Thu, 28 Jun 2012 13:05:11 +0200
From:	Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@...llo.nl>
To:	Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@...nel.crashing.org>
Cc:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linux-arch@...r.kernel.org,
	linux-mm@...ck.org, Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>, akpm@...ux-foundation.org,
	Rik van Riel <riel@...hat.com>,
	Hugh Dickins <hugh.dickins@...cali.co.uk>,
	Mel Gorman <mel@....ul.ie>, Nick Piggin <npiggin@...nel.dk>,
	Alex Shi <alex.shi@...el.com>,
	"Nikunj A. Dadhania" <nikunj@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>,
	Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk <konrad@...nok.org>,
	David Miller <davem@...emloft.net>,
	Russell King <rmk@....linux.org.uk>,
	Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@....com>,
	Chris Metcalf <cmetcalf@...era.com>,
	Martin Schwidefsky <schwidefsky@...ibm.com>,
	Tony Luck <tony.luck@...el.com>,
	Paul Mundt <lethal@...ux-sh.org>,
	Jeff Dike <jdike@...toit.com>,
	Richard Weinberger <richard@....at>,
	Ralf Baechle <ralf@...ux-mips.org>,
	Kyle McMartin <kyle@...artin.ca>,
	James Bottomley <jejb@...isc-linux.org>,
	Chris Zankel <chris@...kel.net>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 02/20] mm: Add optional TLB flush to generic RCU
 page-table freeing

On Thu, 2012-06-28 at 17:09 +1000, Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:
> On Thu, 2012-06-28 at 01:01 +0200, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> > On Wed, 2012-06-27 at 15:23 -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > 
> > > Plus it really isn't about hardware page table walkers at all. It's
> > > more about the possibility of speculative TLB fils, it has nothing to
> > > do with *how* they are done. Sure, it's likely that a software
> > > pagetable walker wouldn't be something that gets called speculatively,
> > > but it's not out of the question.
> > > 
> > Hmm, I would call gup_fast() as speculative as we can get in software.
> > It does a lock-less walk of the page-tables. That's what the RCU free'd
> > page-table stuff is for to begin with.
> 
> Strictly speaking it's not :-) To *begin with* (as in the origin of that
> code) it comes from powerpc hash table code which walks the linux page
> tables locklessly :-) It then came in handy with gup_fast :-)

Ah, ok my bad.

> > > IOW, if Sparc/PPC really want to guarantee that they never fill TLB
> > > entries speculatively, and that if we are in a kernel thread they will
> > > *never* fill the TLB with anything else, then make them enable
> > > CONFIG_STRICT_TLB_FILL or something in their architecture Kconfig
> > > files. 
> > 
> > Since we've dealt with the speculative software side by using RCU-ish
> > stuff, the only thing that's left is hardware, now neither sparc64 nor
> > ppc actually know about the linux page-tables from what I understood,
> > they only look at their hash-table thing.
> 
> Some embedded ppc's know about the lowest level (SW loaded PMD) but
> that's not an issue here. We flush these special TLB entries
> specifically and synchronously in __pte_free_tlb().

OK, I missed that.. is that
arch/powerpc/mm/tlb_nohash.c:tlb_flush_pgtable() ?

> > So even if the hardware did do speculative tlb fills, it would do them
> > from the hash-table, but that's already cleared out.
> 
> Right,

Phew at least I got the important thing right ;-)
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